Editorial

 Portorož, the city of roses, hosted the sixth Industrial Forum IRT in a row. More than 45 exhibitors presented their offer at the trade exhibition, and 54 high-quality lectures and presentations were given by domestic and foreign experts. More than 350 participants claim the three day event, concluded by the toolmaker and machine builder conference, is the only real opportunity for professional socialization in Slovenian industry.
Domestic industry is well aware of the importance of constant innovation and technology development. Namely, the organizers Industrial Forum IRT received more registrations of professional lectures than ever before in the six-year history of the forum, making it clear the companies know how to compete in the global world – with their own know-how and solutions. Miran Varga 

 New Roemheld rotating module with integrated media supply reaches any assembly position in an optimal way.
Assembly equipment must be as flexible, process-reliable, ergonomic and economical as possible. If a work piece needs to be accessed from several sides, it has to be rotated, which often proves to be problematic. Control and actuation components in conventional solutions limit the available rotating angle, thereby hindering efficient assembly. The new Roemheld rotating module with integrated media supply can help. It can be used to reach any desired position. The module is available in two sizes, both for small and light parts (a couple cm), as well as for large parts with dimensions over 1 meter and weighing over 200 kg. 

 Mitsubishi Electric robots and servo drives ensure high speed of handling/manipulation and save space. Mitsubishi Electric has been supplying the medical and pharmaceutical industry with its solutions and innovations for years.
Mitsubishi's key to success in different applications involving robots and servo drives is speed of operation combined with saving space. The article provides an overview of applications of Mitsubishi robots and servo drives for filling and packaging vials for medical purposes. 

 Most manufacturing technologies for composite materials are still treated as business secrets and are being improved every year. The devil is in the details, but generally speaking the technologies are well known. Several lamination procedures are known. As it has already been mentioned in previous issues, the fabric is impregnated with epoxy or polyester resin.
It all begins with the fabric that can be used 'raw' and impregnated with the resin later (so-called wet lamination), or in the form of a pre-preg. Prepreg is fabric material pre-impregnated with resin, so it must be kept stored in a freezer.   

 Reducing weight and keeping or improving the properties is a challenge for the automotive industry, originating from the requirements to reduce the emissions and improve the fuel economy of motor vehicles. Innovative plastic parts offering low wear and high quality are therefore becoming increasingly important. Winkelmann Powertrain Components, headquartered in German Ahlen, realised this long ago and makes their pulleys from thermosetting materials on WITTMANN BATTENFELD machines.
What later grew into Winkelmann Group, was founded in 1989 by Heinrich Winkelmann and Caspar Pannhoff. The product programme initially included kettles, coffee pots, washbasins, dustpans and milk cans. The group of companies today employs more than 3000 people around the world, 700 thereof in Ahlen, where they are making an annual turnover of about 500 million €. 

 The purpose of automation is to increase the productivity, at the same time reducing the waste and manual repetitive work. The article focuses on automation of electron beam welding. The electron beam has a special quality and ability: it can be computer-controlled in real time. Back-scattered electrons, released as the electron beam contacts the material, are an important source of feedback for automation. Surface scanning makes it possible to obtain an image of the surface, similarly to scanning electron microscopy.   

 Systems in industry, healthcare, energy business, urban governance and elsewhere face the challenges of ever-increasing complexity of data they create. In order to optimise their reactions to a constantly changing business environment, the machines have to be learning from experience. It seems the opportunities are endless.
The future belongs to machines that will be able to learn. Machine learning enables collection and processing of data as a foundation for optimisation. Researchers have used neural networks to develop hundreds of industrial forecasting systems, and then fed them with thousands of exemplary cases to learn from.   

NX changed considerably during the last years. Every new version improves the existing functions and adds new applications. The biggest change in software operation was certainly the synchronous technology, by now introduced into nearly all segments of work with NX.
After seven years, the user interface of NX was refreshed. NX has adopted the now standard user interface with ribbon and cards. For some, this happened not a second too early, while some older users might now be scratching their heads in dismay. But Siemens did their homework and the ribbon is arranged very logically. The commands have been grouped on the cards to follow the workflow. Danilo Širec 

 Internet was a disruptive innovation and a result of many, especially academic research activities. The crucial contribution towards its implementation was given in 1989 by British scientist Tim Berners Lee from the particle physics laboratory at CERN.
MIT upgraded the technology to so-called World Wide Web Consortium, setting the technical standards for web pages, browsers and global connectivity devices, paving the way to a revolutionary technological, economical and socio-cultural development of global society. By building a global network, they have enabled the users to grasp and share new knowledge and skills.