Industrial automation needs cool components

Industrial computers are designed for use in industrial environments and are often exposed to extreme conditions such as dust, heat and vibrations. Hybrid cooling strategies that combine active and passive cooling are effective in cooling the components of an industrial PC under extreme conditions.
Passive cooling can cool an industrial PC without a fan in environments without sufficient air exchange or in hermetically sealed systems such as embedded systems. This includes, for example, heat pipes and heat spreaders, which transport the heat loss away from the components to a heat sink attached to the outer wall of the IPC housing. Active cooling with fans is mostly used for industrial computers with powerful processors and graphics cards. However, the forced ventilation of industrial PCs requires an environment with little dust in the air, as well as filters and regular maintenance to prevent dust accumulation.

To ensure that HMI displays can reliably fulfil their role as an interface between man and machine in industrial automation, they must be intuitive and error-free to operate. Efficient cooling concepts include active and passive methods, such as the use of heat sinks, miniature fan units or liquid cooling to quickly dissipate the power loss of the installed electronics. Another good cooling solution is the use of a housing part as a heat sink. Such housing coolers are often manufactured using the aluminium die-casting process due to its many advantages.

In industrial automation, robot automation ensures greater process efficiency, reduces errors and improves employee productivity by relieving them of routine tasks. Various methods can be used to cool electronic components installed in robotic process automation (RPA). Control units, drive units, servomotors, sensors/actuators and power electronics have different tasks and installation situations. EKL takes into account the specific requirements of your industrial robots and the environmental parameters in order to develop the best cooling technology for your robot automation. We place particular emphasis on optimising the use of resources, efficiency and cost reduction of your RPA cooling systems.

The reliable switching or control of higher voltages and currents is of central importance in industrial automation in order to set machines and means of transport in industrial automation in motion. Wherever a lot of electricity flows, a lot of heat loss occurs. To ensure the smooth management of energy flows and the control of machines and systems by MOSFET and IGBT power transistors, these components in power supply systems, inverters, converters and controllers must be cooled effectively. A common solution is passive heat sinks that cool by free convection and thermal radiation (infrared or IR radiation). Active cooling systems, such as fan coolers and water cooling, are used for higher power densities.

In industrial automation, thyristors are used to control electric motors, in inverters and for voltage regulation. They have the ability to switch large amounts of current. Cooling of thyristor semiconductor devices is critical as they can generate significant heat at high current and voltage levels. Effective cooling methods include the use of heat sinks, forced ventilation or liquid cooling to dissipate the heat generated.