Blog

On June 21, 2014, 7 employees from IFP will be getting on their bikes at the world famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway and riding the Indiana Tour de Cure to help raise money to Stop Diabetes.

The Tour de Cure is a series of fundraising cycling events held in 44 states nationwide to benefit the American Diabetes Association.  The Tour is a ride, not a race, with routes designed for everyone from the occasional rider to the experienced cyclist. Our team decided to team up to help those who are affected by diabetes. 26 million people in the United States have diabetes, and the riders in the event want to do something about it.

If you can’t join us, why not support us!  By making a donation, you will be helping the Association provide community-based education programs, protect the rights of people with diabetes and fund critical research for a cure.  As a team, united in our desire to Stop Diabetes, we are asking for your support.

We are determined to reach our team goal, one rider at a time. So let’s get in gear and ride to Stop Diabetes! If you feel like you’d like to help, please consider making a small donation to one of our team members at the following page:

IFP – Indiana Tour de Cure Team Page: http://ow.ly/uKtRD

If you are interested in riding the event yourself to help raise money, please visit the following link to learn more & register: http://www.diabetes.org/indytour

You can also follow the Indiana Tour de Cure on Twitter at @INTourDeCure for more information. Also, the IFP team will be posting updates on the event on our Twitter at @IFPAutomation.

Thanks for visiting!

Service calls and maintenance can become very expensive especially for simple changes to your machine.  B&R Automation has a few tricks to reduce these costs.  Their SDM (System Diagnostics Manager) eliminates the need for expensive software, training, and potential service calls.

The SDM is built into every PLC, PC, PowerPanel, and fieldbus module (remote I/O) that B&R produces.  It operates from your web browser of choice and does not require software. All information from your HMI, PLC, I/O, drives, and safety equipment is monitored and downloaded.

When first opened the system shows the state of all components.  All red items indicate errors while green means status is good.  Since this can be monitored remotely, many times the “System Dump” is used which exports all the information to a file to be analyzed in more detail.

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As integrated safety grows in popularity, so does the importance of safe motion.  Many drives come standard with STO (safe torque off) which is required to meet the minimal safety requirements on most machines.   This function disconnects power from the drive which increases start-up times and increases the possibility of tampering.  Some STO systems are still hard-wired requiring added wiring effort and a could become a source of error.

With safe motion control (SafeMC) from B&R Automation’s ACOPOS family, the drives can remain active to control speed and position.  This integrated solution easily connects to all other devices through Powerlink using openSAFETY technology which allows all safeMC functions activate over the network. Additional hardware is easily added which only requires a few clicks within the programming eliminating the need for an electrical design change.

B&R supports 15 different safe motion control functions:  Safe torque off (STO), Single channel (STO1), Safe brake control (SBC), safe stop1 (SS1), safe operating stop (SOS), safe limited speed (SLS), safe direction (SDI), safe limited increment (SLI), safe maximum speed (SMS), safe maximum position (SMP), safe speed monitor (SSM), safe homing, and safe brake test. (more…)

Happy New Year to you all!

We hope that 2013 was a great year for you, and that 2014 brings you continued prosperity. This is an exciting time of year for us in the automation industry, as many new innovations are being brought to market in 2014. IFP and B&R have been working hard to bring many new product technologies to market for 2014, and we wanted to share a few of them with you here.

Innovation in controller response time performance

Looking for a faster, higher performing automation control system? Ultrafast automation reACTION technology in our latest controllers allows our customers to reduce response times in industrial automation applications down to 1 μs.

With reACTION technology, B&R is able to reduce response times in industrial automation applications down to 1 μs. This new approach allows extremely time-critical subprocesses to be managed using standard hardware – all within the requirements of IEC 61131 – while cutting costs by reducing the load on the controller and optimizing performance to match demands. The result is an immense increase in performance without added costs. (more…)

We’d love for you to stop by and visit with us. IFP will be co-located with B&R Automation at Pack Expo, September 23-25, 2013 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. We’ll be located at Booth S-5623.

A key topic for the week will be offering ways for packaging OEMs, end users, and integrators to increase their machine system performance, reduce their time to deliver new machine designs to market, and lower the total overall cost of ownership of their automation systems.

B&R will be exhibiting a complete offering of intelligent automation products, including industrial PCs, HMIs, control systems, I/O Systems, safety technology, motion control, Automation Studio software, and more.

Pack Expo Booth Features

This year, our booth will feature ROLLON’s multi-axis ActuatorLineTM demonstration unit– controlled and driven by B&R Industrial Automation. It’s 5 actuator- 3 axis of motion infrared target practice game. It features dual independently driven X-X’ parallel axes and an innovative Y-axis from ROLLON’s ActuatorLine ROBOT series that contains two carriages that traverse independently of each other within a single extrusion. The players attempt to target IR light sensitive sensors mounted on the dual Z-axes. As the player registers more hits, the demo speeds up to increase the difficulty proportional to the player’s skill level. All 5 of the linear axes are driven by ACOPOS Servo Drives and 8LSA Synchronous Motors with a full color Power Panel HMI/PLC controller.

Our multi-touch HMI panel, modular software development tool – Automation Studio 4.0, energy measurement and management solutions, and our powerful industrial PC – the APC 910 will be showcased in our booth.