Beyond Material Handling: Toshiba’s New THL Series

In today’s automation and robotics landscape, flexibility, versatility, and affordability are the names of the game. Manufacturers like Toshiba, with their new SCARA THL model robots, are innovating with materials, construction, design, and size, to expand the base of industries that automation helps to operate better, faster, and more efficiently. The recent Automatica show in Munich was a perfect opportunity to show just how much speed and accuracy these machines can generate, from a small package.

With the goal of achieving lower mass, weight, and inertia, Toshiba Machine engineers used lightweight aluminum as a base for the robots’ mechanical components. In order to maintain sufficient rigidity and stability to allow for the necessary accuracy, these components are constructed with a series of ribbed sections. This space-saving step leads to an overall smaller servo motor unit. With 50% lower energy usage than other Toshiba Machine models and an extensive range of capabilities, these robots truly open up the possibilities of automation where it may not have been even thought of before.

We at IIS will always support this type of innovation, and we have plenty of our own to offer. See our site to learn all about it.

Sercos III v1.3: Automation Optimization

Continuing its shift from early days as a set of specifications, to its current status as the leading universal bus for digital solutions in mechanical automation applications, Sercos recently introduced Sercos III v1.3. This latest specification comprises two new profiles as well as two new services. Read on for more details

Energy Profile: Sercos III v1.3 can not only improve your production efficiency, but also your energy efficiency, with customizable events and parameters to ensure that energy consumption only occurs in process-critical circumstances.

Encoder Profile: Allows for further system integration by making the interface of absolute and incremental encoders available to all network devices.

Oversampling Service: This is where the digital shift really makes a difference. Oversampling allows for faster-than-real-time data acquisition and transmission for equidistant values. For the fastest, most time-critical applications, such as laser cutting or marking, the procedure allows for data to be collected and processed, at a faster speed.

Time-Stamping Service: Allowing for event triggers separate from the clock cycle, the time-stamping procedure operates based on value acquisition and command activation based on time stamps. This service is especially useful in semiconductor and solar manufacturing.

Of course, this is just an overview of the advances present in Sercos III v1.3. For full details, read the announcement here, and visit IIS to see how the specification can be put into action.