Innovation

Innovation

Reduce costs through modularization

In machine design, you face the daily challenge of minimizing costs and speeding up processes. At the same time, you need to adapt quickly and flexibly to technological change and changing market conditions. This article shows you how you can sustainably reduce costs in all phases of the machine life cycle using modular concepts in mechanical engineering. And you will receive practical tips on how to make optimum use of the savings potential of modular systems for your automation solutions.

Innovation

Transformation

The industrial transformation and Industry 4.0 have fundamentally changed the way companies produce. IoT, digitalization and globalization are having an impact on the industrial automation landscape and are shaking up the market. At the heart of this change are advanced machine concepts that enable more efficient, more flexible and more intelligent production. How can you design your machine concepts in industrial production so that you can meet future requirements and remain competitive? We take a look at this in this blog post.

Innovation

Perfectly combine electrics and pneumatics

In machine design, you face the daily challenge of minimizing costs and speeding up processes. At the same time, you need to adapt quickly and flexibly to technological change and changing market conditions. This article shows you how you can use modular concepts to sustainably reduce costs in all phases of the machine life cycle and how you can make optimum use of the savings potential of modular systems for your automation solutions.

Innovation

Cost-efficient development of laboratory devices

Life sciences and biopharma companies that successfully maintained supply during the COVID crisis are now focusing on adapting their operations to the new normal, and sustainably improving cost efficiency in laboratories. Manufacturers of laboratory devices must therefore also ask themselves how they can develop and produce new equipment for laboratory automation that offer their customers decisive advantages in terms of time and costs.

Innovation

Systematically reduce compressed air costs

Today, energy efficiency is a key issue for industrial companies worldwide. Rising energy costs and increasing environmental regulations are forcing companies to rethink and optimize their energy consumption. In this interview, Heiko Fleischhacker, Energy Efficiency Expert and Certified Auditor at Festo, explains the added value that companies can gain from a systematic compressed air energy efficiency audit. The use of compressed air is often ignored, even though simple and sustainable energy savings can be achieved here.

Innovation

Sustainable and energy-efficient production

High energy prices, rising cost pressure and a growing awareness of climate protection make energy efficiency an important task for companies. Optimizing energy consumption is particularly important in the manufacturing industry. Compressed air generation and use are often overlooked. Measures such as eliminating leaks and optimizing the pressure level reduce energy costs and increase the overall productivity (OEE) of the systems. Sven Lensdorf, Head of Sales Operations Services at Festo, explains how innovation and consulting reduce the carbon footprint for the environment.

Innovation

Successfully planning battery cell production

Battery cell production plays a crucial role in the development of modern energy storage solutions, especially for electric vehicles. In view of the increasing demand for efficient and environmentally friendly batteries, this market offers enormous potential. In the following interview, Jochen Luik, Global Industry Segment Manager Electronics at Festo, provides insights into the most important aspects and challenges of battery cell production.

Innovation

Predictive maintenance: increasing OEE with AI

In times of increasing competition, cost pressure and a shortage of skilled workers, the highest possible overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is more important than ever in order to be successful on the market. Fortunately, there is a solution to increase effectiveness: predictive maintenance. Find out now, using cylinders as an example, how you can use predictive maintenance to increase your key figures such as OEE – and thus ensure your long-term success.

Innovation

AI in industry: what you need to look out for

How do you think artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in industry? Can you imagine which aspects should be considered during implementation? Below, we explain why it is worth using and what you need to look out for when implementing it – with real examples and step-by-step instructions. Find out whether you should develop an AI solution yourself or buy one in our make-or-buy guide.

Innovation

Efficient maintenance management with a CMMS

A Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) can be critical to an efficient maintenance team in a production-oriented environment to ensure smooth operations and minimize downtime.

Innovation

Optimize maintenance: Tips for maintenance staff

You face many challenges every day. You plan and carry out maintenance work. You also document these and rectify errors. The requirements are varied and demanding. In particular, activities that are repeated over and over again and the effective use of previous problems are frequent sticking points. Every unnecessary action, every missed piece of information leads to downtime and production losses. These do not go down well with management. The good news is that this can be done better – with a digital maintenance manager.

Innovation

Superconductor technology for the future

Automation and digitalization, the use of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and microfluidics as well as personalized medicine will shape the laboratory of the future. Innovative material technologies such as nanomaterials, smart materials and superconductors play an equally important role. Superconductor technology enables the contactless movement and handling of objects and fluids. This makes it ideal for sterile and safe working in laboratories and biotechnology.

Innovation

Spare parts, incident and maintenance management

Efficiency is the key to success in industrial maintenance. Machine standstills and downtimes are frustrating and cause high costs. They also have a significant impact on the entire company. Just one hour of unplanned machine downtime at a manufacturing company can result in a loss of around EUR 220,000. Costs are also incurred in connection with the investigation and identification of the fault.

Innovation

How to improve maintenance KPIs with CMMS

Maintenance KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) play a decisive role in evaluating the performance and efficiency of maintenance processes. A Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) offers a solution to improve these KPIs and optimize maintenance performance. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of a CMMS in terms of improving maintenance KPIs (MTBF/MTTR/OEE) and explain how it can help you achieve your goals.

Innovation

Automated cell dispensing

Be it for the development of drugs or for testing alternative forms of therapy – working with cell cultures is becoming increasingly important in the life science sector. It is also increasing the demand for solutions to make handling cells and organoids more effective and efficient. Manual pipetting ties up scarce and expensive personnel resources. At the same time, large sample quantities can mean that capacity limits are quickly reached.

Innovation

Automated dispensing of a viscous hydrogel

In the Festo LifeTech Application Center, we tested a setup for UPM Biomedicals for the automatic dispensing of their biocompatible nanocellulose hydrogel.

Innovation

Optimize liquid handling results

In dispensing or pipetting applications in laboratory automation, it is important to obtain reliable results that are analyzed by calculating the accuracy and precision. To achieve these results, several influencing factors must be taken into account – from the measurement equipment to external and internal influences.

Innovation

5 benefits of pressure-controlled liquid handling

There are different systems available for liquid handling in laboratory automation. Festo favors pressure-controlled dosing systems for liquids because they offer a wide range of impressive benefits.

Innovation

Easy integration of piezo valves

Extremely energy-saving, silent and without any heat build-up – piezo technology offers many benefits for efficient and precise gas handling in medical technology and laboratory automation. The biggest difference between piezo valves and proportional solenoid valves is the energy consumption, which is up to 95% lower. Up to now, it has not been possible to simply replace proportional solenoid valves since piezo technology needs voltages of up to 310 V and thus specific electronics. Now, however, there are simple solutions for this, which we will be presenting in this article.

Innovation

Design for Manufacturing of lab-on-a-chip devices

Mobile in vitro diagnostics is a growing market. Demand for fast and reliable point-of-care tests is steadily increasing. With Festo as a partner, scientists, universities, start-ups, and even established manufacturers can reduce the time-to-market for their lab-on-a-chip systems and get started with mass production straight away. This is made possible through collaborative engineering and a modular system of ready-to-install, pretested subsystems.

Innovation

Saving lives with the right antibiotic

Until now, it would typically take two to four days for clinicians to find out the best, most effective antibiotic to prescribe to patients with an infection. A new diagnostic platform finds the right drug, for targeted therapy within 24 hours. Included: dosing heads and handling portals from Festo.

Innovation

Integrated solutions for liquid handling

One of the main topics in laboratory automation is handling extremely small quantities of liquids, from milliliters to nanoliters. That is why Festo offers compact and perfectly integrated functional units. These standardized components enable system and equipment manufacturers to shorten their development times and, at the same time, meet strict quality requirements reliably and efficiently. This makes Festo not just a valuable partner for customers in the healthcare sector, but also in other industry segments in which accurate liquid handling is required, such as food and cosmetics production, printing and cleaning, as well as breeding and incubation processes.

Innovation

Teaching robot for dentists

No one enjoys going to the dentist; young children even less so. To help future dentists and dental assistants deal with children during dental treatments, the Japanese company tmsuk has developed a humanoid robot that realistically simulates the behavior of young children during these treatments, complete with fidgeting, flinching or closing the mouth. The dummy’s realistic movements are produced using proportional pressure regulators with piezo technology.

Innovation

On the hunt for high throughput diagnostics

Global diagnostics companies and laboratories are in a race against time to adapt testing capacities to current demand. Due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for testing exceeds the existing capacity by far.

Innovation

Ideal for developers: Liquid Handling Starter Kit

Pressure-controlled dispensing systems are used wherever precision, throughput and reliability are required. Festo offers developers in laboratory automation a starter kit for dispensing liquids that simplifies and speeds up the initial setup of a new dispensing application.

Innovation

Repetition accuracy in liquid handling

The need for an external air supply means that space is limited when installing liquid handling systems. Also, the multiple dosing of liquids places very high demands on repetition accuracy. Festo has found solutions to both challenges, which are described in more detail in this article.

Innovation

Accurate removal of prostate tissue

Medical robots are playing an increasingly important role in medical diagnostics. Partially automated handling solutions allow the precise targeting of suspicious areas in the prostate, delivering more accurate biopsy results and better prostate cancer detection.

Innovation

The road to Le Mans

When racing, drivers usually use their arms and legs constantly to operate the accelerator, gears, clutch and brakes. The newly developed pneumatic control system from Team BRIT and MME Motorsport means that all of the team’s racing drivers can now compete in races using the same car, regardless of their physical limitations. Spurred on by this innovation, the drivers have now set themselves an ambitious goal: the Le Mans endurance race.

Innovation

Faster development of specimen handling

Festo USA, in collaboration with PerkinElmer, developed a compact specimen handling solution for a global leader in manufacturing medical devices. Thanks to the involvement of the customer early on in the development process, the subsystem is easy to integrate into the customer’s platform – with Festo standard components, a PerkinElmer® JANUS G3 workstation, and a modified rotary gripper module. This approach resulted in minimal complexity with maximum productivity and process reliability.

Innovation

Mixing & dosing gases – 4 applications, 1 solution

Precisely mixing and dosing gases plays a decisive role in many areas, whether in life sciences, machine building or food & packaging. The proportional flow control valve VEMD is the cost-effective solution provided by Festo for a wide range of applications. Let's take a look at four examples.

Innovation

Collaboration in laboratory automation

The Dutch company Synchron Lab Automation developed an automated DNA extraction system with very high throughput rates by working very closely together with Festo. As a result, customers in the seed industry can collect DNA from up to 40,000 samples per day.

Innovation

Automated opening and closing of sample vials

The handling of sample vials – in particular opening and closing – is a special challenge in the field of laboratory automation. The goal is to unite high levels of process reliability with minimal complexity. You’ll find out here which factors are important in finding the right solution.

Innovation

Precision and accuracy in liquid handling

A key process in lab automation is dispensing liquid aliquots, for example by means of automated liquid handlers. Evaluating liquid handling performance is important for lab technicians, as well as for manufacturers of liquid handling technology. The yardsticks for evaluating dispensing performance are precision and accuracy.

Innovation

Precision and accuracy in liquid handling

A key process in lab automation is dispensing liquid aliquots, for example with the help of automated liquid handlers. Evaluating liquid handling performance is important for lab technicians, as well as manufacturers of liquid handling technology.

Innovation

Dispensing and pipetting

Small liquid droplets with volumes on the microliter scale are used in many applications today. Areas where these droplets can play a particularly important role include: liquid handling in life sciences and pharmaceutical research, diagnostics, and microfluidic applications. Two liquid handling techniques which are typically employed are pipetting (a contact technique) and dispensing (which can be a non-contact approach).

Innovation

Contactless weighing

Ultra-clean and germ-free processes are becoming increasingly important for industrial production, particularly in the medical and pharmaceutical industry. Surfaces in cleanrooms must be sealed, easy to clean well and to disinfect properly. A new concept using superconductor technology now enables contactless and precise weighing and measuring.

Innovation

The laboratory of the future – the SMART lab

As laboratory processes become increasingly complex, automation solutions become absolutely essential in order to maintain process accuracy and consistency, and to improve efficiency.

Innovation

Valves with piezo technology

Certain ceramics exhibit piezoelectric characteristics, meaning that when these ceramics are mechanically deformed, a voltage accumulates in the material. This effect also occurs in reverse: Applying a voltage to these ceramics will cause them to deform.

Innovation

System solutions in lab automation

It is useful to distinguish between laboratory automation – which denotes the software and hardware technologies and engineering adaptations that control instruments without human intervention – and laboratory robotics, which refers more specifically to the physical manipulation of samples and their containers.

Innovation

Through the eyes of the future

You wear glasses so you can see better. You wear augmented-reality glasses so you can see more. These new spectacles enhance the surroundings with computer-aided information. Technologies with augmented reality (AR) make it possible to look at everyday situations as well as the working world of the future in a different way.

Innovation

Electronics to wear

So-called wearables are in high demand, whether for smart watches, fitness wristbands or data glasses. In the private sphere, these devices offer many ways of acquiring data. For example, distances covered, sleep patterns or body temperature can be checked. The technology also creates potential for use in companies, especially with regard to optimizing processes.

Innovation

Fascinating interaction

Whether at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida or in the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, visitors like to converse with the humanoid robot RoboThespian. It approaches them directly and does so with movements that look quite natural. All this is made possible by the latest technology from Festo, such as the fluidic muscle and piezo valves. The 1.75-metre-tall humanoid weighing 33 kilograms was developed by Engineered Arts Limited in the English town of Penryn in Cornwall.

Innovation

The keeper of time

Joachim Ullrich is President of the PTB – Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig, Germany’s national metrology institute. The clocks that tick here are among the most accurate in the world. In this interview, the physicist explains how they work, what this has to do with Coordinated Universal Time and why it’s a good idea to define a second to sixteen decimal places.