In the first half-year of 2010, the global automation technology manufacturer recorded the highest number of new orders in the company’s history.

The conference theme was labeled Solution:ing – A way to customer specific engineered automation. “With us, every customer finds the right solution,” said Dr. Eberhard Veit, chairman of the Management Board of Festo AG, explaining the rapidly growing demand to the conference participants.

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Sales grew more than 30% in the first half of the year compared with the previous year. “Increasingly shorter and more intensive economic cycles mean that companies have to be more flexible today than in the past,” stressed Dr. Veit.

Last year Festo once more increased its proportion of sales spent on research and development to the current level of 9.5%, which has a direct benefit for customers. “With rapid manufacturing in the Festo Fast Factory, for example, the time to market is reduced many times over,” said Veit.

In addition to laser sintering, three other procedures are used at the Festo Fast Factory: laser melting for metals such as aluminum with an EOS Formiga P100 machine (http://ow.ly/2Xj92), fused deposition manufacturing or FDM for polymer products with a Stratasys FDM machine (http://ow.ly/2Xjip) and wire cutting. Plastics processing experts predict a bright future with laser sintering or FDM: “In five years, these procedures will probably be standard,” explained Klaus Müller-Lohmeier, Head of Advanced Prototyping Technology at Festo.

“We use rapid prototyping in research and development, particularly to reduce the initial sampling time for molded parts. Ultimately this reduces the overall development time and the products’ time to market.” However, Festo can also produce individual components in short production runs rapidly and relatively economically through savings in tool costs.

Now only 60% of products manufactured using generative methods are internal developments, while 40% go straight to the customer. “For some of the orders placed, the Festo Fast Factory was even the deciding factor as customers were impressed with the technological leadership,” explained Müller-Lohmeier.

The gripping fingers of the Festo FinGripper came about through additive manufacturing procedures in the Festo Fast Factory. The FinGripper was inspired by the fins of fish, making it a textbook example of Solution:ing: An ingenious customer solution is created that can grip irregularly shaped fruit and vegetables or fragile chocolate eggs.

With its new organizational structure, Festo can react to customer-specific requirements. The Solution Engineering Centres, or SECs, will be able to provide ready-to-install customer solutions in Europe, Asia and the Americas (including Canada) rapidly – whether these relate to handling gantries and fully fitted control cabinets, or special applications at component level. These ready-to-install solutions are delivered directly to the machine and system, and allow customers to focus fully on their core competences for the system concept.

One example of this is the high-speed H-gantry, an Intersolar Award-winning handling system said to be 30% faster than any conventional Cartesian handling solution – for similar acquisition costs. Festo developed this high-speed handling solution for dynamic assembly processes in photovoltaics, electronics, small-parts handling and wherever small, light mass-produced items have to be positioned quickly and flexibly.

The high-speed H-gantry can be scaled to any stroke, has a very low profile, a low centre of gravity and a simpler base than fast delta robots. Optimized acceleration and deceleration characteristics enable strokes of two metres and one metre in the X and Y direction respectively, with an accuracy of 0.2 mm.

Thanks to an engineering trick, the H-gantry and its T-gantry cousin reach speeds of 5 m/s and acceleration rates of 50 m/s² over the entire working area. The two toothed belt axes are connected to the cross member with a single rotating toothed belt around the drive shaft. The belt is driven by two servomotors (Festo EMMS). A positive side effect is that no motor needs to be moved within the X-Y area with its two degrees of freedom. And reduced loads and two servomotors, which are mounted parallel to each other, facilitate quick, dynamic motion and result in less wear.

The linear-rotary module of the high-speed H-gantry is ingenious too. It consists of a spindle sleeve with integrated energy through-feed for the front-end module and comprises the Z-axis, to which the gripper unit is attached. The linear-rotary module accelerates to a speed of 1.5 m/s at a rate of 20 m/s². Suction and mechanical grippers with workpiece loads ranging from 0 to 2 kg can thus be operated.

The conference was told that Festo also develops products with geographic considerations, such as from Asian machine and plant manufacturers, who are currently breaking records for new orders. “The VUVG valve range is a classic example of joint engineering based on our ‘lead user approach’,” explained Dr. Ansgar Kriwet, Member of the Management Board Region and Sales Europe at Festo AG.

The Sales division at Festo has targeted industry platforms for key industries such as electronics & light assembly, food & beverages or automotive construction. The industry platforms are global teams that identify the specific needs of lead users in the most important markets and develop product concepts from these. The lead users are permanently integrated into Festo’s development process.

“The Asian lead users taught us especially that it must be possible to use product (such as the VUVG valve range) quickly and easily,” added Dr. Kriwet.

However, “Solution:ing” does not stop at the rapid delivery of electrical and pneumatic components and subsystems. “Festo also distinguishes itself through a high level of solution competence in the area of services,” added Veit. These include energy saving services for the efficient use of compressed air, or the seminars on highly topical subjects such as safety or change management by the Festo Training and Consulting division.
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