ATI Tech Fair

    I was just wondering if anyone else on here will be going to ATI's Tech Fair this year? I went last year and wondered after the event if possibly anyone on here was also there. It is August 10th in Auburn Hill, MI. As long as I dont end up in Mexico for work at that time I should be there.

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    I went last year with some other guys from work and liked it. They had quite a few robots setup and running with their equipment. The have a lot of quick change and deburr tools so if you use any of that stuff its definitely worth checking out. They also had some pretty good food and free BEER, so that was pretty nice too. One thing I didn't realize until I was leaving it isn't just ATI that is putting on displays. There is also AMT, whose facility is a couple blocks away, and then some other companies were in AMT's parking lot with semis that had displays you could walk through. I cannot recall what companies where there with the semis though. They have shuttles that will pick you up at several different parking lots because the parking at ATI is way too small for everybody. I hadn't realized until I was leaving that those same shuttles will take you not just back to your parking lot, but also to the other displays. ATI had quite a few companies come do presentations you could watch inside their facility, or just stay outside in the tent, where the food and drink was, and watch the presentations on TVs they had setup.

    I went to it last year, but I doubt I'll be going to it this year. A couple of the things I found interesting were the talks on collaborative robots, the free beer, and the cell displays over at AMT.


    AMT had a cell that was using a servo/air hybrid gripper, where the servo would get the gripper into position, and then air would be used to provide the clamping force. I thought that was pretty interesting. They also had a bunch of iRvision cells, but it wasn't anything new.


    Another interesting thing was ATI's method of unlocking the gripper at one of their stations. The unlock port was piped through the master side, then through the tool side, through the docking fixture, back through the tool side, back through the master, and finally to the unlock port. Any attempt to unlock the tool when the robot wasn't at the docking station would just result in blowing air.

    Check out the Fanuc position converter I wrote here!

    Just so happened that HH Barnum was at our shop today with their display trailer that you can walk through. They have it all setup with all of their latest and greatest automation products. It is pretty well done too, IMHO, just about anything that can be powered up, is. You can try stuff out and play around with it. Some other company's displays I've seen have cool ish, but its never powered up for you to see it. They said they are one of the companies that will be in the parking lot at AMT this year with the display trailer to check out.

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