One of the world’s biggest and fastest-growing motor-makers, Regal Beloit, is one of the latest companies to sign up to exhibit at the upcoming Drives & Controls Show in April. Other exhibitors are coming from as far afield as Estonia, India and China.

The German government is funding a project, led by Siemens, to develop techniques for recycling electric motors. In particular, the More (MOtor REcycling) project will focus on techniques for recycling rare-earth materials used in permanent magnets.

The semiconductor manufacturer Texas Instruments (TI) has announced the availability of a series of microprocessors with built-in industrial communication protocols that, it says, will accelerate industrial designs and cut component costs by up to 30%. The chips include a programmable real-time interface that eliminates the need for an external ASIC or FPGA.

At the recent SPS/IPC/Drives show in Germany, Sick unveiled its first rotary encoders with built-in Ethernet IP interfaces. The AFS60 single-turn and AFM60 multi-turn absolute encoders use the Ethernet interfaces for diagnostics and to monitor networks.