Although many technologies that were previously tethered by cables have now given way to their cordless counterparts, power transmission still generally requires leads and sockets, despite industrial automation and digitalization. This conventional method still harbors the age-old nuisances of burned, bent or soiled contacts, which can cost time and money due to production stoppages. The most vulnerable applications are those that have to be repeatedly plugged in and unplugged, such as the automated transportation systems increasingly used in production halls and warehouses. While the machines operate on a pretty much autonomous basis, a member of staff still has to frequently plug them in to charge. The larger the fleet of automated industrial trucks, the more likely this manual charging process is to interrupt workflows. Weidmüller Interface has come up with a neat solution in the elegant, efficient and sophisticated FreeCon Contactless system it is showcasing at HANNOVER MESSE 2017.

As the name implies, FreeCon Contactless supports a contact- and maintenance-free power supply, which can be used for a wide range of industrial applications. The FreeCon Contactless is ideal as a means of automatically charging mobile systems, such as forklifts, other transportation systems and robots. This innovative system uses inductive resonance coupling to transmit 240 Watts – 24 Volt DC / 10 amperes across an air gap of up to five millimeters at up to 90 percent efficiency.

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