An improvement in the products for resolution and input voltage by expanding the options for the products produced by the company for their 62AG rotary encoder series.

This series of 62AG rotary encoders have been highly popular among the consumers because of its low price while still capable of giving out high quality performance, and with the improvements in place, it is now more capable of adapting to more specifications thus leading to its ability to provide more applications.

One improvement that Grayhill is looking to improve is reducing the voltage that is needed in order to power the equipment. In the previous model, the equipment requires at least five voltages in order for it to run. Now, they reduced the voltage to 3.3 voltages as requested by the consumers. This is the best choice for people who are looking for devices which can be powered at lower voltages.

In addition to the change, instead of being labeled as 62AG, the component will be labeled as 62VG.

The company is also looking to increase the number of options when it comes to resolution. When the series was first released in the market, the user is only able to choose between 16 and 20 as its resolution options. In the current update, the component have two more options resulting in four options namely 16, 20, 24, and 32 position resolutions. With these setting, any designer will be capable of focusing more on the finer details of what is being encoded.

The 62AG was also designed to measure the shaft or knob rotation with regards to its magnitude and where it is going. Those functions are all upgraded with the integration of the optional push button. This will make the 62AG the perfect device which may help in making sure that you are capable of scrolling through a bunch of items from a list and then selecting which among the functions you would desire. This new feature of the 62AG makes it an ideal tool for industries like automotive, medical, test and measurement, and audio or video.

Part of the improvements which were implemented is the optically coupled switching. This part of the 62AG will allow it to go over a million cycles showing how durable it has become, especially after the upgrades have been implemented. This also makes it superior compared to other mechanical encoders which are available in the market.

If you buy over 500 units of the 62AG, the manufacturing company will also be adding custom shaft configurations and switch terminations.

Daman Ranks High Among Fastest Growing Companies

The product Daman produced this year made them rank 51^st among a hundred of Indiana Companies which are included in the list.

The rank was based on their annual earnings which doubled -$9.3 million to $19.5 million – since 2009. In addition, the company also had an expansion which was worth $1.75 million which resulted to an increase of 127 employed applicants in its new plant.

The owners of the company decided not to talk about the accolades that their company had.

For easy access to the Brennan product catalog, the company is looking to expand its mobile application including its tool that can be used by customer as a cross reference. This will already include pressure ratings for at least 6,000 parts which comes from a collection of 330 series which were produced by the company.

Brennan Industries Inc., introduced its mobile application back in 2012. This gave users access to information from over 30,000 products manufactured by Brennan, including comparison between products of the same class, and means of reaching out to the company.

The mobile application for Brennan Industries Inc. will be modified for use by iPhone and Android users. As mentioned earlier, this will now include pressure ratings from several products in either PSI or bar units. In addition, the company announced that they will also make it easier for the users to search for the parts either through their series or the numbers which are labeled on the parts.

Bill Jarrel, the Vice President of Brennan Industries Inc. for marketing and operations, said that they know what their users need.

“We know that the pressure ratings are very important for the customer,” Jarrel sais, “By making the users gain access to this information through their mobile phones, we will be making their job much more convenient that it was before.”

The application highlights a catalog that is easier to navigate than ever before. This is broken down into several categories which include the specification for each of the products that are being offered by Brennan Industries Inc.

A cross reference tool has also been installed in the newly expanded mobile application. This allows different users to compare Brennan’s products side by side with products from other companies. It was developed in order to make sure that you will be able to get the most value. Furthermore, the mobile application also maintained the page which allows you to gain access the methods by which you can contact the company.

They also included a promotional video by Brennan Industries Inc.

Stelson Moving to Help Encourage Funding for Research for the Industry

Kim Stelson, the director of Center for Compact & Efficient Fluid Power and professor of mechanical Engineering at University of Minnesota, has been planning and pushing hard for more funds for the industry beyond the year 2016.

The National Science Foundation has been funding the research activities of the industry for years and it has warned that the funding will decrease by next year and will be completely lost beyond May 30, 2016.

Stelson proposes a three legged approach for the funding.

The plan includes the following: a) Projects will be looking for individual funding from outside sources which should range between $2.5 million – $3 million; b) The Center will be trying to gain at least $2 million from the membership fees and; c) Try and push for government grants.

Stelson said that all the individuals and companies who are involved in the industry should be working hard for this to happen and in order to create a funding system that will be fair to everyone.

Eaton, a production company powerhouse, made it known to the public that it has added a cross wedge rolling machine in its facility at South Bend, Indiana. This is going to be used to produce transmission shafts for heavy duty trucks. The equipment is worth $1.9 million.

With the new equipment, Eaton believes that they will have an improvement in the production of the transmission shaft. They will be using cross wedge rolling system, which is an improvement from the hammering system that the company has been using. The latter system has been outdated, thus, it may become more of a liability rather than an asset.

Comparing the two, the hammering system uses brute force in its production of the shafts after the steel is heated to a certain degree. However, the newer system uses a rolling system after the steel is heated to a temperature of about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit.

The cross wedge rolling machine was created in Belarus. The one that Eaton has in its facility in South Bend, Indiana, is one out of the few in the world, specifically in the United States. In addition, they are also testing another machine in the same facility, and it is projected to start its operation in the middle of September.

David Larkins, the plant manager from Eaton’s facility in South Bend, said that the cross wedge rolling machine will improve their manufacturing process exponentially. He also added that the people in the facility are very excited of the possibilities that they can achieve with the new equipment in full operation soon.

Eaton’s facility in South Bend, Indiana is the one responsible for creating the forges for their other facilities. These facilities include the ones in King Mountain, North Carolina, Shenandoah, Iowa, and San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Such facilities are the ones which assemble different components in order to meet the global standards that different truck companies have expected Eaton to produce. In spite of the many facilities, this can be very beneficial for the company, and with the new equipment, more forgings can be created, thus more components can be distributed to the four facilities mentioned above. As a result, they can create more trucks, improving production efficiency and the amount of production.

Eaton’s facility in South Bend, Indiana was purchased back in 1989. This was to be part of the company’s facility for vehicles. It employed 110 people and still does until to this day. However, the facility is not only beneficial to the mother company, but it has also helped the community of Indiana. It has contributed $200 million worth of wages, taxes, and supplier impact.

Last year, the company and its employees had also donated $41,000 to organizations in across the community. Included in these organizations are the United Way of St. Joseph County, La Casa de Amistad Hispanic Community Center, and St. Margaret’s House Center for Women and Children.

To those who are unaware about Eaton, it is diverse power company which provides energy saving solution for their clients who are in need of mechanical, hydraulic and electrical power. Last year, they were able to buy Cooper Industries which was a big help in achieving a record breaking earning quarter back-to-back. The company has under its umbrella at least 102,000 employees along with multiple clients across the globe.

New studies show that the heavy equipment used in the construction industry can become fuel efficient through a recently discovered innovation—the hydraulic steering systems.

On a regular hydraulic steering mechanism, heavy construction equipment utilizes a central variable displacement pump that delivers the fluid. The valves will then throttle this fluid to various gears and cogs, thus making the whole mechanism move. This also results to a lot of wasted fuel.

A New Mechanism Leads to Effective Fuel Saver

In order to avoid fuel inefficiency, a group of American researchers from Purdue University created this ingenious plan to pair one actuator to one hydraulic pump; hence completely eliminating the valves in the design.

Purdue University’s professor Monika Ivantysynova of the Maha Fluid Power Systems from the School of Mechanical Engineering stated that a significant amount of the world’s fuel consumption comes from heavy construction equipment. That is why improving its fuel efficiency is necessary and life changing.

“This is also good for commercial businesses everywhere,” she added, “as it will improve a fuel company’s bottom line.”

In this new design, the actuators are controlled by adjustments made to the pump displacement. Such a mechanism changes the amount of fluid that is being pumped to the actuator, making the diesel engine run at optimal speeds, which saves a lot of petrol in the process.

Other mechanisms are also being developed such as the steer by wire mechanisms. Though not yet complete, it is already seen as a failure since it still uses fuel-wasting valves.

Staggering Improvement in Fuel Efficiency

The tests conducted on the new electro-hydraulic power steering system showed a significant improvement of 15 percent in fuels savings and an increase in productivity by 40 percent. With the same equipment installed, the numbers showed an increase of 70 percent in the amount of soil that is being removed for every kilogram of fuel consumption.

Safer and Easier to Control

The new steering mechanism has also made sure that the operator is safe and more efficient too since the equipment is very easy to use and control, thanks to the steering wheel torque feedback mechanism. In addition, the said feedback is also being regulated according to the limitations of steering wheel angle and turning speed, the speed of the vehicle, and the connecting joint that links the two sub-frames.

Meanwhile, the steer by wire technology removes all the torque, making the whole system dangerous. This leads to a lack of tactile feedback that the driver will need in order to control the vehicle properly.

Deformations: Nothing to Worry About

The group also discovered deformations of the steel parts found in the mechanism. This is thought to be caused by the increased temperature during operations.

Ivantysynova says, “The deformation can vary from one to another. It all depends on the thickness of the lubricating film.”

She added that they are the only ones to have created the code that uses these lubricating films despite of high temperatures and pressures.

The research paper contains all the details regarding the project including: the layout of the system, the hardware, and the electronic controller, which was made through modeling, and was used for simulation.

Easy Integration to Mainstream Heavy Equipment

Anthony Franklin, the manager of the Maha laboratory, said that they are working with several partners in the industry in order to test and apply the research that they have conducted.

“The prototypes can be easily incorporated to any equipment that is currently being used in the industry. It can also be industrialized if the manufacturers have decided to opt for the system that we’ve created,” he added.

This study will be presented in a detailed manner during the SAE Commercial Vehicle Engineering Congress, which is going to take place on October 1 to 3 in the United States.

Eaton, a production company powerhouse, made it known to the public that it has added a cross wedge rolling machine in its facility at South Bend, Indiana. This is going to be used to produce transmission shafts for heavy duty trucks. The equipment is worth $1.9 million.

With the new equipment, Eaton believes that they will have an improvement in the production of the transmission shaft. They will be using cross wedge rolling system, which is an improvement from the hammering system that the company has been using. The latter system has been outdated, thus, it may become more of a liability rather than an asset.

Comparing the two, the hammering system uses brute force in its production of the shafts after the steel is heated to a certain degree. However, the newer system uses a rolling system after the steel is heated to a temperature of about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit.

The cross wedge rolling machine was created in Belarus. The one that Eaton has in its facility in South Bend, Indiana, is one out of the few in the world, specifically in the United States. In addition, they are also testing another machine in the same facility, and it is projected to start its operation in the middle of September.

David Larkins, the plant manager from Eaton’s facility in South Bend, said that the cross wedge rolling machine will improve their manufacturing process exponentially. He also added that the people in the facility are very excited of the possibilities that they can achieve with the new equipment in full operation soon.

Eaton’s facility in South Bend, Indiana is the one responsible for creating the forges for their other facilities. These facilities include the ones in King Mountain, North Carolina, Shenandoah, Iowa, and San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Such facilities are the ones which assemble different components in order to meet the global standards that different truck companies have expected Eaton to produce. In spite of the many facilities, this can be very beneficial for the company, and with the new equipment, more forgings can be created, thus more components can be distributed to the four facilities mentioned above. As a result, they can create more trucks, improving production efficiency and the amount of production.

Eaton’s facility in South Bend, Indiana was purchased back in 1989. This was to be part of the company’s facility for vehicles. It employed 110 people and still does until to this day. However, the facility is not only beneficial to the mother company, but it has also helped the community of Indiana. It has contributed $200 million worth of wages, taxes, and supplier impact.

Last year, the company and its employees had also donated $41,000 to organizations in across the community. Included in these organizations are the United Way of St. Joseph County, La Casa de Amistad Hispanic Community Center, and St. Margaret’s House Center for Women and Children.

To those who are unaware about Eaton, it is diverse power company which provides energy saving solution for their clients who are in need of mechanical, hydraulic and electrical power. Last year, they were able to buy Cooper Industries which was a big help in achieving a record breaking earning quarter back-to-back. The company has under its umbrella at least 102,000 employees along with multiple clients across the globe.

On July 17, 2013, Bosch Rexroth, a manufacturer with several sites in the United States, was given Green Manufacturer magazine’s Silver award for its Sytronix variable-speed hydraulic pump. Green Manufacturer is a North American trade magazine that encourages and spotlights manufacturers who produce effective and sustainable products that do not contaminate or harm the earth, water, or air.  The magazine holds a yearly Product Innovations competition.  The Sytronix pump won the award for the 2013 competition.

Green Manufacturer’s Products Innovations competition was open to any company in the manufacturing industry who had some new products to show. Those which took special importance are those which had or will have a significant impact on the environment. One of those products was Bosch Rexroth’s Sytronix. The winner was decided by a committee of industry experts who examined the features of Sytronix and Bosch Rexroth’s commitment to sustainability at all of its U.S. manufacturing facilities.

Hydraulic pumps have a great variety of uses in the manufacturing industry.  The top uses for a pump such as the one made by Sytronix are metal working and pressing and the processing of plastics.  The different between the Sytronix pump and a regular hydraulic pump is that the speed of a regular pump is not regulated.  With the Sytronix pump, the pump speed up and power is used only when needed.  Hence, power is not wasted when it is not going to be used.  As a result, the pump does not get as a hot as a normal pump because it is not constantly working.  Since there is not as much heat produced, not as much energy is used to cool down the pump.  In total, the Sytronix pump can save anywhere from 30 to 80 percent in energy use.  A nice additional feature of the Sytronix variable-speed pump is that is less noisy than regular pumps.

Bosch Rexroth, which has manufacturing sites in 80 countries throughout the world, has proven its dedication to greener manufacturing in other areas.  For instance, it is ISO 14001 registered, which means it is trying to adhere to the world-wide environmental management system criteria for a corporation.  Furthermore, it has implemented a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at all its plants.  In industry, carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels are used and through certain chemical reactions, such as those used to produce cement, iron, and steel.  The aim of this plan is to reduce these emissions by at least 25 percent in seven years. Bosch Rexroth’s Fountain Inn, South Carolina plant was recently awarded for its Fountain Green project which aims to reduce hazardous wastes, promotes recycling, and provides greener solvents than those commonly used in companies for manufacturing.  In addition, Bosch Rexroth is recycling 100,000 hydraulic pumps that would ordinarily be dumped, and plans to refurbish these pumps so that they can be used again.  Green Manufacturer stated that these factors contributed to Bosch Rexroth eligibility for the Innovator’s award.

Eaton Corporation, a company which deals with different fields in the production industry has announced a record breaking second quarter this year. They were able to gain up to $519 million during the second quarter which is 32 percent more compared to the same period last year. They have attributed this to the incorporation of Cooper Industries.

In addition, the earning per share has also increased to $1.09. Though this may be a decrease compared to the numbers reflected back in the second quarter of 2012, the increase in sales made it insignificant to its record breaking quarter of this year.

Alexander M. Cutler, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer said that their earnings per share started the second quarter started out just below their standard price. However, they were able to turn things around with the help of their operating margins which was rated at 15.6 percent. It was the driving force behind the record breaking quarter which resulted in record breaking sales in the quarter. Again, he also attributed the performance with the incorporation of Cooper Industries into their company.

The 38 percent that Eaton Corporation was able to gain in the second quarter of this year had a two percent loss when it came to core sales. However, this was relieved by a gain of 40 percent from their several acquisitions. The two percent decline in their core sales has been attributed to the economic instability which plagued the entire world especially during latter half of the last year and during the early part of this year. So, the slight decline in their performance with regards to the core sales is not to be blamed on them, but instead to the economic condition that the world is experiencing.

Cutler also added that when 2013 came, they were expecting only two to three percent increases in their market sales. That prediction was based on the current, unstable economic conditions that the world is experiencing.

“However, with the economic performance performing way under than what we expected, I guess, we will only be experiencing an increase of one percent this year,” Alexander Cutler added.

The second quarter of Eaton Corporation generated good enough cash flow when it gained $609 million with $480 million of free cash flow. This came to be because of the $129 million in capital spending. In order to improve their sales, with free cash flow as the basis, the company is planning to reduce its capital spending. With that being said, they are expecting their cash flow at the end of this year to be between $2.5 billion and $2.6 billion.

However, with the help of the integration of Cooper Industries into the company, they were able to increase savings up to $115 million, which is $25 million than what they first announced. If this pace keeps up, Eaton Corporation will be able to gain up to $210 million by the next year.

Cutler also added that they will be expecting changes in their fortune in the third quarter. They are expecting their share to be sold at a range of $1.05 to $1.15.