Festo Showcased at 2023 CeMAT

Firmly Follow The Path of Industrial Development

In the rapidly developing logistics field, Festo is widely recognized by customers for its excellent application technology and excellent solutions. In recent years, the logistics industry has been in a high-speed growth trend, including e-commerce, food and beverage packaging, biopharmaceuticals, new energy and other fields. Festo tailors its business models and strategies based on the needs, characteristics, and trends of specific industries, providing strong technical support and solutions for system integrators and equipment manufacturer customers through more specialized and industry-standard products.

Cui Peng, the manager of Festo's Intralogistics industry, stated that in the face of uncertainty in the fiercely competitive market, users have increasingly strong demands for flexibility in logistics systems. Based on effective data analysis, product development and intelligent production, accelerating the development and design cycle of new products, efficiently, quickly and reliably responding to user needs, and responding to diverse market demands have become one of the core competitiveness of enterprises.

Festo's flexible logistics solution can quickly adapt to different processes and product specifications, supporting rapid production switching and mixed line production to meet the production requirements of the food and beverage industry. The first appearance of CeMAT's intelligent warehouse transfer system is a customized "turnkey" solution provided by Festo that combines gas and electricity, ensuring efficient, stable, and reliable operation of equipment, further reducing energy consumption, and achieving energy-saving and low-carbon production. The solution is flexible and highly compatible, supporting real-time cloud monitoring. The overall solution of electric drive with ELGA electric axis as the core replaces the traditional solution of motor matching with track, saving installation and debugging time. It can significantly reduce the failure rate while ensuring high-speed and safe operation. At the same time, the motion terminal VTEM can achieve flexible switching of multiple actions and optimize energy consumption control. The CPX-AP-I remote IO communication module helps to achieve real-time monitoring of logistics status, preparing for digital production in the Industry 4.0 era.

Lithium batteries play an important role in the development of the new energy vehicle industry. As a clean energy storage method, the global sales of electric vehicles exceeded 10 million in 2022. Cui Peng said, "The lithium battery industry has extremely strict requirements for logistics and transportation systems, mainly focusing on the materials, processes, accuracy, and safety of logistics equipment." Due to the sensitivity of lithium batteries to metal elements, logistics equipment cannot contain elements that may undergo chemical reactions with them, such as nickel, copper, zinc, etc. This means that logistics equipment must use specific materials to avoid unnecessary chemical reactions. Meanwhile, compared to the traditional e-commerce industry's packaging transportation, the manufacturing and transportation lines of lithium batteries require higher accuracy and efficiency of equipment. The controller needs to accurately control the position, transmission, and positioning of the lithium battery to ensure accuracy and consistency in the production process, thus requiring more precise motion control.

Festo's targeted automation solutions for the lithium battery industry, such as compact cylinders ADN, grippers DHPC, valve terminals VTUG, and lead screw electric cylinder ELGT for cantilever systems, not only meet the production needs of "copper nickel zinc ban" from the perspective of controlling the emissions of automation components, but also cope with the harsh environment of drying rooms to ensure the normal operation of automation control components.

Empowering Industry Users with Digital Intelligence Solutions

Traditional procurement, sorting, transportation, and warehousing methods are no longer able to meet the rapid development of the logistics industry. Digitalization and intelligence have become the core driving force for the continuous advancement of the logistics field, bringing infinite opportunities for industry development. Most cloud services in the market only display simple status data on cloud dashboards, such as speed, temperature, power consumption, etc. Although it can reflect the current operating status of devices, it does not involve in-depth data analysis and cannot bring higher value to users. In Festo's latest "Automation Experience" (Festo AX) service, artificial intelligence technology is introduced into the process of predictive maintenance and energy efficiency management. Predictive maintenance can be achieved by collecting the operational status data of components on site and building mathematical models through artificial intelligence, ultimately presenting the concept of "health value" to customers. This allows users to have a very intuitive understanding of the current performance status of the production line, and to replace components with low health values more systematically and targeted before equipment malfunctions, effectively achieving predictive maintenance.

Sorting is an indispensable link in the logistics field, and its efficiency and accuracy are crucial for the timely delivery of goods. Automated and intelligent sorting can ensure accurate handling of goods. The Festo high-speed removal system can accurately remove non-conforming products on the transmission line, helping to improve logistics efficiency and meet customer needs. The eliminator adopts a combination of high-speed valve and low friction cylinder as the core of the scheme, with excellent switching frequency, extremely short switching time, high level of repeated accuracy, and service life. Compared to the solution of universal valves and cylinders, the efficiency has been improved by about 30%. At the same time, the remover integrates a low friction cylinder, PLC, high-speed valve, and touch screen, which not only makes the overall structure more compact, but also makes the user interface more user-friendly, simplifying the installation and debugging process. In addition, the adoption of multi key intelligent control method allows for intelligent control by programming different motion trajectories and actions based on the size of the parts and transmission line speed.