3 exciting things to expect at next month’s Hannover Fair

It’s a mere 40 days until the opening of the planet’s biggest industrial tradeshow, the Hannover Fair.

It seems to me that a lot of companies in there fluid power industry use Hannover as a place to launch new products. Here are three things I’m particularly interested in seeing:

1. RFID pressure transmitters. I had the pleasure of attending a press preview of the Hannover Fair in Berlin last month, and the product that most left me with the “gee whiz” sensation was Stauff’s PT-RF wireless testing system—thanks to RFID technology, you just place the antenna about a half-inch from the tip of the pressure transmitter. Push the button and in less than a second, the hand-held reader activates the pressure transmitter. The reader displays and stores data for further evaluation, or downloads to a PC through the USB interface. In addition to the pressure value itself, additional tracking information is also sent, including media temperature, date and time of the measurement and the unique serial number of the pressure transmitter. Very cool stuff.

2. The Hidden Beast. Ever since Bosch Rexroth purchased Hägglunds a number of years back, I’ve wondered how they’d fit the company’s enormous drives into their current product lines. Well, there’s a big new product being launched (okay, technically at a plastics show at the end of March … but it’ll get much wider exposure a couple weeks later in Germany) called The Hidden Beast. It’s a hydraulic motor that the company claims is smaller, stronger, more reliable and more energy efficient than any other. Pretty impressive sounding. Officially called the CA 10 to 40 gearless motor range, this motor delivers high power density, and full torque and full speed simultaneously to outperform rivals. Bosch Rexroth expects this range to be popular in the plastics, marine/offshore, mobile machinery and recycling industries.

3. Animal X. Festo Corp. is known for having an incredible R&D department, and their string of fascinating nature-inspired technology has kept them in the news the past few years. They’ve shown biomimicry technology that’s borrowed from elephants, penguins, birds, kangaroos, and more. I’m told that they’ll be unveiling an all-new robotic animal this year at Hannover, but I haven’t been able to get any specific details on what it is yet. But stay tuned, I’m sure it will be something that will make that 10+ hour plane ride worth it.

Stay tuned for more coverage of Hannover in the coming weeks.