Australian drive solutions providers are stepping up the fight against counterfeit gear unit and motor ‘copycats’ in order to safeguard Australian industry from breakdowns, inefficiency and downtime.

The Sugarloaf Pipeline will provide a significant boost to Melbourne’s water supply, and is a key part of the Victorian government’s three-pronged approach to securing Melbourne’s water reserves. The 70 km pipeline will transfer water from the Goulburn River, near Yea, to the Sugarloaf Reservoir, outside Yarra Glen on Melbourne’s outskirts.

The United Nations General Assembly declared 22 March as World Water Day. This day was dedicated to technical projects aiming to improve the drinking water supply of people all over the world. One of these projects concerns a unique water supply system on Indonesia’s Java island, which was designed by scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and was commissioned in March 2010.

Pump Industry Australia (PIA) is conducting a Firepump Workshop in Sydney on 12 May 2010. Suitable for consulting engineers, fire protection companies, fire-pump packagers, fire authorities and other regulatory bodies within the industry, the workshop will discuss fire pumps to AS 2941-2008 - Fixed fire protection installations.

Developing a machine vision application for the first time need not be a headache. If you follow a thorough, three-stage process to develop, test and deploy the project, the results should provide an essential tool in product inspection and valuable insight to enhance overall product quality.

The purpose of tuning loops is to reduce errors and thus provide more efficient operation that returns quickly to steady-state efficiency after upsets, errors or changes in load. The ‘forgotten loop’ has been the operator, who is typically trained to ‘average’ parameters to run adequately under most steady-state conditions.

It was about 120 years ago that Mark Twain used the phrase “more than one way to skin a cat”. In the world of PLC programming, that cliché is still applicable today. Thanks to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), five standard programming languages have emerged as the most common, used for both process and discrete programmable controllers.

Every second of every day in any year around the world, Electrolux sells two of its products. This requires state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, such as the fully automated and flexible powder-coating facility for oven and grill cavities recently installed at Electrolux’s manufacturing plant in Dudley Park, South Australia.

Machine builders often find themselves in a contradictory situation. On the one hand they have to react flexibly to customer needs with customised machines, while on the other hand product standardisation reduces costs and engineering effort. Modular machinery design has the potential to serve both aims.

It was about 120 years ago that Mark Twain used the phrase “more than one way to skin a cat”. In the world of PLC programming, that cliché is still applicable today. Thanks to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), five standard programming languages have emerged as the most common, used for both process and discrete programmable controllers.

Industrial robots, once the preserve of large-scale manufacturers, are increasingly being seen in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Major technological advances have ushered in a new age of robotics, in which once-futuristic visions have either become realities or are on the horizon. Yet despite breakthrough applications in areas ranging from manufacturing to medicine, robots carry risk.

How do you handle the tiny components needed for constructing nanoscale devices? A European consortium has built two demonstrators that include microrobots equipped with microgrippers to automatically pick up and install carbon nanotubes thousands of times thinner than a human hair. They have even tackled that ever-present bane of nanotechnology - sticky fingers.

As the costs of fuels and consumables continue to rise, the ability to accurately measure the amount used in a process becomes significant in controlling costs and determining bottom line profits.

Shamic Sheetmetal has now become the first in Australia to sign for delivery and installation of a completely automated ‘lights-out’ materials handling system.