Multiple shows serve the leading edge

Tom Shelley reports on this year's Mtec show and co-located events targeted at those interested in developing products that take advantage of strides in technology This year's Mtec show again packs an extraordinary amount of technology into a small space and two days. As well as a considerable number of technology oriented companies exhibiting advances in sensors, measurement and instrumentation, all key technologies to developing any advanced, intelligent system, there will be free workshops and seminars on industrial networks and sensing. The Profibus Group will participate in the free seminar programme taking place both days in the Industrial Networks Technology Centre and will also be showing a new multi-vendor process automation demonstration system. This has been built and will be operated by the team from the Profibus Competence Centre at the Automation Systems Centre in the Department of Engineering and Technology at Manchester Metropolitan University. The AS-Interface Expert Alliance will present an update of latest developments as its seminar contribution. The Sensors Forum is sponsored by the DTI and aims to provide a single point of focus for industrial organizations in the UK for whom sensors are relevant, and broader connectivity for academia to challenging industrial sensing requirements. A free workshops programme on the second day, February 16th will include: "Industrial applications of strain gauges", to be presented by Ian Ramage of Techni Measure and "Development in high temperature strain monitoring", by Anthony Cross of Strainsense. "Optical methods for full field shape measurement" will be presented by Russell Coggrave of Phase Vision and "The pocket PC - an instrumentation revolution", by Dr Russell Sion of C-Cubed, a company whose palmtop instrumentation developments were first revealed by Eureka in October 2001. The presentation will cover the use of pocket PCs as hand held instruments in vibration analysis applications such as condition based maintenance, bearing fault detection and torque analysis. Case studies and examples will be included. Highlights of the exhibition will include an extension interface to Festo's CPX terminal's local bus on stand D30 that allows satellite I/O modules to be installed up to 10m away, but without the cost of an additional fieldbus communications module. Designated, 'CP Interface', it supports both electrical I/O and pneumatic solenoid valves. The interface can be used to provide a few I/O points needed in a particular remote location, or up to 512 I/O channels for large scale process and production automation systems. Satellite I/O subsystems can be fully environmentally protected to IP65 for the pneumatic valves and IP67 for the electrical I/O, just like the host CPX terminal. Diagnostics includes visibility down to individual channels. Savings include around £200 for each fieldbus interface that can be eliminated. Roxspur Measurement and Control will be showing its new NGX and LGX flowmeter range on stand D125. New and improved features include: a rear blow-out safety vent, gas or liquid flow measurement, accuracy up to {{plusminus}} 1.25 per cent FSD, air flow ranges from 5ml/min to 150 litres/min, gas tube removal without tools, an ATEX infra red alarm option, and UKAS calibration on request. The NGX version has a scale length of 100mm and the LGX, 30mm. RDP Electronics will be celebrating 40 years of research, development and manufacture on its stand, D112, and will be showing its latest sensor developments. On stand C28 in the adjoining Machine Building show, Baldor will be focusing on the cost, performance and system building benefits of Ethernet Powerlink. Demonstrations will show the simple migration route the technology offers for motion automation builders currently using positioning drives compatible with the CANopen DSP 402 standard. The decision of the EPSG, the group controlling the Ethernet Powerlink real-time Ethernet standard, to work with the CANopen standards body and adopt the DSP 402 profile and DS-301/302 application layers offers the potential to upgrade the network to a much more sophisticated and higher bandwidth standard - 100Mbits/s rather than 1Mbit/s - with minimal disruption to the way OEMs build systems and to the control software. Co-located events are: Imaging Photonics and Optical Technology, Machine Vision and Displays Technology, Machine Building and Automation, Practical Vacuum, Drives and Motion Control Systems, 3C - Contamination Control and Cleanroom products, and medical device technology 06. Mtec Exhibition site