Today's consumer market demands low prices and fast delivery. Under such pressure, the performance of automation systems must be enhanced. With the global trend of rising wages, advanced industrial countries and emerging economies have begun pondering the future development of manufacturing. Automated manufacturing systems built in the last century have become inadequate. With the trend of specialization, high-performance and high-compatibility controllers make automation systems more effective whether in the early stage of integration, in actual operation, or in follow-up maintenance.
The automation industry has always been a highly bespoke industry and as such developed closed architectures around each manufacturer. In the past, integration was not necessary in automation industry, and closed-architecture products worked well. However, through this lack of compatibility certain open standards did come through to enable integration with a wide range of products. This has led to an upsurge in the popularity of open-architecture and this has become an important consideration for manufacturers needing to purchase automation equipment.
One important automation machine is a tube bending machine which, due to the great variety of applications, such as cars, bicycles, sports equipment, furniture, sanitary equipment, etc., requires a level of complexity and accuracy that was unheard of before and tube bending machines have developed from being two-dimensional to three-dimensional. In the past, the machines had to produce an actual model for trial, and then gradually adjust it until it was perfect. It not only consumed vast amounts of human and material resources, but also caused longer delivery times. When delivery was urgent, it caused poor quality. Modern technology has enabled manufacturers to design and preview the tubes and devices before they’re produced. With their built-in numerical control and 3D graphics technology the tubes’ in formation can be checked to ensure it’s correct and may cause production problems and if there are issues the design can be edited continuously until it’s correct. This pre-visualization function greatly reduces the cost of production and also has better control of production line information, to fully meet the needs of intellectual automation.
To observe the future trends of industrial machinery we must look at two key points, that of open architecture and machine vision. In order to facilitate the smooth integration of functions such as computer processing, control, communications, graphics, human-computer interface, and so on, and also to simplify the integration process and reduce setup time, open architecture must be employed. Because of the use of open architecture, injection moulding machines, tube bending machines, and winding machines quickly and seamlessly integrate with other automation equipment thereby achieving compatibility. As long as they meet the same standards, related technologies and products on the market can be easily obtained to significantly reduce the difficulty of system development and development time.
In addition to open architecture, the visualization function of these devices makes the operation of the automated systems clear at any point of time during the manufacturing process. The operator or administrator can be fully aware of information and data to produce perfect products, while optimizing system performance.
It is these features that are the key to the future of industrial machinery and will help to maintain low manufacturing costs whilst achieving an even higher standard of product.
