Hannover. Key technologies from major players and "hidden champions" alike will be on offer at Industrial Supply under the umbrella of HANNOVER MESSE 2016 in Hannover, Germany. The international trade fair for innovative supplier solutions is presenting the whole range of competing and mutually beneficial materials and processes in halls 4, 5 and 6. Visitors can take a voyage of discovery through myriad industrial applications, and will also find suppliers who see themselves as development partners keen on collaborating with OEMs to create best-fit solutions.

One example of such collaboration is a pipe coupling developed by Jäger Gummi & Kunststoff from a direct rubber/plastic compound. The requirement for this came from a well-known glass manufacturer who markets popular glass-tube bioreactors for processing biomass by photosynthesis. These bioreactor units, in ever-increasing sizes, must be easy to assemble and dismantle so as to permit cleaning of the glass tubes, and they must also be capable of rapid modular expansion. The answer: rubber/plastic direct bonding developed by Jäger, involving a process in which freshly injection-molded plastic components are over-sprayed with rubber without the need for any additional primers. This solution has already proved itself a million times over, in the automotive industry as well as in wastewater aeration plants. As a pioneer in the field, Jäger has developed a wide array of elastomer/thermoplastic pairings.

For the glass manufacturer mentioned above, Jäger has now developed a connection and locking system that, among other things, remains pressure-tight up to 6 bars, rules out interference flows within the tubes, is physically durable and stable, can be made electrically conductive, is reusable, and can be easily installed without electric power tools – and all this at a competitive price. The new, universal rubber/plastic quick-release connector offers significant advantages over the connector system used before, with the main benefits being reusability, significantly improved ease of installation, and a reduction in glass breakage that used to result from excessive torque upon tightening the previously-used pipe clamps. A further plus is a significant increase in the unit’s operational pressure, which makes cleaning faster and more effective.

Salzgitter’s "Automotive und Integrated Industry" initiative

With its long-standing presence at the Industrial Supply show, Salzgitter AG is anything but a "hidden champion". The highlight of the steelmaker’s stand is a modular transverse matrix chassis by Volkswagen AG – a fine example of the power of innovation that comes from group-wide collaboration. The demonstration chassis sports many components made of innovative products from Salzgitter Flachstahl characterized by high-expansion holes for lower susceptibility to stress cracking along the edges.

In line with HANNOVER MESSE 2016’s lead theme of "Integrated Industry" , Salzgitter is also demonstrating ongoing development by its subsidiary KHS GmbH on a research project first showcased at the 2015 fair. In the Direct Print Machine (direct printing on to PET bottles) RFID tags are used to simulate "pucks" – intelligent work-piece cradles for transporting and aligning PET bottles. According to the configuration in use, the displays of the HMI (Human Machine Interface) and the tablet respond to data modifications by automatically adapting the required documentation.

Micro-technology as a key prerequisite for Industry 4.0

Tomorrow’s high-tech supplier trends are on show at the IVAM product market "Micro, Nano & Materials" being staged at Industrial Supply 2016. As a joint pavilion, the IVAM trade association and its members have once again put together an impressive array of micro- and nano-technologies as key enablers: micro-components, microstructures and sensor systems, intelligent laser processing systems and high-precision 3D measuring processes, energy harvesting and nanotechnology applications. All of today’s hottest topics in the sector will also be addressed, e.g. systems integration, robotics and Industry 4.0. High-precision miniature components such as sensors and actuators play a major role in industrial automation, and IVAM will provide proof positive that Industry 4.0 cannot be realized without micro-technology solutions.