Beckhoff at Hannover Messe 2012

At Hannover Messe between 23 and 27 April Beckhoff will present its complete product range for IPC, I/O, Automation and Motion applications on a large booth covering around 1,000 m². In addition to numerous innovations, the focus will be on efficiency improvements, including increasing production efficiency through intelligent and high-performance PC-based control technology, efficiency improvements in engineering, and increased energy efficiency in drive technology through new, advanced servomotors. An international sales and technical expert team from more than 25 countries is looking forward to talking to visitors at the Beckhoff booth.

One of the key purposes of modern automation technology is to improve the efficiency of production processes: The challenge is to control machines intelligently in order to increase machine output, so that more products can be produced with less raw material. PC-based control from Beckhoff provides the automation technology prerequisites for achieving this. The fast control technology is able to control processes with very short reaction times in the order of 100 μs. For packaging equipment, for example, this means that less packaging material is used without affecting the functionality of the packaging. In many cases, reduced raw material consumption is the key factor for reducing the ecological footprint of a production process. The integration of high-quality measurement technology in automation offers further optimisation options: important and critical process data are available to the controller in parallel with the process control. For example, integrated system Condition Monitoring can allow  processes to run closer to their limits and therefore more efficiently.

With growing processor power PC-based control offers adequate capacity reserves for local machine intelligence for running additional control tasks such as high-precision measurement technology or robotics on a central CPU.

Further innovations which Beckhoff will present in Hanover include the new CP2xxx and CP3xxx Control Panel and Panel PC series. The panels are characterised by a modern operating concept with multi-touch display and advanced, elegant device design. In the execution as built-in or mounting arm devices, the aluminium and stainless steel panels are extremely robust and are designed for use under harsh industrial conditions. Widescreen panels in various sizes and resolutions are available in addition to the classic display sizes in 4:3 format. For single-touch users the new panel generation also offers a number of benefits, including an optimised price/performance ratio with savings of up to 28 % compared with the existing devices.

The trade show presentation at the main booth in Hall 9 will be accompanied by a series of lectures on current topics, such as TwinCAT 3, safety and drive technology.