IEN: What improvements are expected in motion-related technologies in customized solutions for optimal application form factors?
Gingerich: Mechanical components such as linear guides, ball screws, and linear actuators all continue to offer new and improved capabilities, thereby allowing developers of drive and control electronics to explore increasingly fast and flexible positioning opportunities.
IEN: What are the R & D hotspots, and which R & D areas are closest to market?
Gingerich: The need for ever greater speed and precision has helped linear motors finally begin to find their proper niche, and Rexroth has developed new, super high-precision Ball Rail linear guides to exploit these capabilities. We''re finding the need for these products especially in medical applications, where pinpoint precision has led to huge advances in radiation therapy, bone density testing, and medical imaging, to name a few.
Of course, many industries can take advantage of more precision in motion control, so even high-performance machine tools, packaging machinery, printing equipment, and of course, semiconductor applications drive our development activities across our spectrum of drive and control technologies.
One interesting development is the demand at the opposite end of the spectrum of linear motion -- an area currently dominated in the mechanical area by bushings. Many of our customers are now insisting on an upgrade to higher precision, but don''t really need the extreme precision of our standard rail and block systems. A product we have just begun to market is a new, aluminum-based eLINE Ball Rail System, which upgrades many of these light automation tasks to what is really pretty high performance. Applications in this arena are wide ranging and -- mostly -- require only simple drive and control electronics or none at all: light automation, furniture and woodworking, home automation, for example. So the market has been pushing us at both ends of the spectrum -- high end and low end. It''s an extremely interesting problem to have to solve: Where will your engineering resources bring the most bang for the buck? But I guess the real question is what''s high end and low end? If you''re building a house with automatically controlled skylights, sliding windows and doors, that''s pretty high end in that market. Our job as a technology company is to enable customers throughout the spectrum to get the very best end result for the very best value.