In the past, machines were designed to be robust and were often oversized to a greater degree than necessary – although this did increase the service life considerably. It’s little wonder, then, that manufacturing operations often continue to use machines that are regarded as ‘old iron’, but do still fulfil their function. To bring these machines up to the state of the art, it often pays dividends in these cases to convert them to the latest generation of automation. This is what happened at the Lower Austrian Umdasch Group, which subjected an eccentric press to a fundamental retrofit at the end of last year.
Fusion inches closer as ITER completes magnet system
The problem with a Tokamak shape for the fusion plasma, is that the magnetic field from the central solenoid reduces from the centre outwards, leading...