Ever since the first motor car took to the roads, the internal combustion engine has been a staple component in nearly every vehicle production line. With times now changing, manufacturers are finding themselves having to prepare for a greener, cleaner future without knowing what that future looks like or how many units to produce.

Even as machinery and equipment have become more complex and sophisticated in recent years, still the essence of “safe operation” remains largely unchanged and therefore the most basic solutions to ensure safe operation are also largely unchanged.

In the packaging industry, machine builders are increasingly turning to clean and hygienic solutions, particularly when in direct contact with food. Here, special requirements must be met, such as food hygiene or FDA and/or EU compliance. Robert Dumayne, drytech director at igus, surveys recent packaging machine developments.

The question that engineers and manufacturers ask when considering their production joining and manufacturing processes is – can we do this better, cheaper and more efficiently?

The PPMA Total Show is returning to the NEC, Birmingham on 1-3 October and will see the processing and packaging machinery industry come together to showcase the latest technologies and solutions available to the industry.

NUM is helping the Taiwanese machine tool company Chien Wei Precise Technology to develop innovative CNC grinding machines for manufacturing specialist gears used in robotics applications.

For hazardous applications such as establishing the health of electrical components at a substation, the ability to measure temperature accurately over a distance is critical. Achieving this depends on several factors and two of the most important are the resolution of the detector and the chosen camera lens.

Nothing demonstrates the changes wrought by globalisation like a trip to the supermarket. Today, shoppers strolling the aisles can find mangoes from India, wild salmon from Alaska, asparagus from Peru and much more from the farthest-flung corners of the world.