Whoa, That Was Neat
NPE2018 is brimming with exciting new developments. So we asked—What's the coolest thing you've seen on the show floor?
What's the coolest thing you've seen on the show floor?
“The coolest thing I've seen so far is a robotic picker to pick contamination out of a PET bottle stream. It's impressive to me, being new in the bottle processing industry. Seeing something that can actually take the labor and the subjectivity out of the process is pretty cool.”
Corey Tate, Engineering Manager, Unifi
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“Pretty much any of the machines that injection-mold the part right there and then assemble it for you and then hand it to you. They're all pretty cool. Cannon has the booth that is making the puzzle cubes, and they’ll assemble a puzzle for you, put it in a box and hand it to you, which is pretty awesome. And then, we are at this one right here, which is Arburg. You can go over and get the stool, and it will injection-mold all of the stool pieces right in front of you. The robot will assemble all of them and then just hand the part right to you. It's super cool.”
Nathan Maynard, Sophomore, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Plastics Engineering Major
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“The rotating micro-mold in the Mold Craft booth that is molding and then flipping and robotically taking it out and doing the other part. It's so detailed that they're giving away magnifying cubes so that you can see the tiny holes in the part, because without it, the part just looks flat. It's amazing.”
Tony Demakis, Alliance Specialties and Laser Sales, Sales and Marketing
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FANUC is doing automation, but it is the speed at which they are doing the automation, you know? So, you get accuracy and speed, and when you see what they are doing and how fast they are doing it—that is pretty impressive.
Ray Coombs, President, Westminster Tool
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