WITTENSTEIN at the Hannover Messe 2024: Shaping the world of cybertronic motion

No future without a past: from its beginnings in 1949 as a factory for special-purpose machinery with just three employees to a diversified, market-leading group of companies in 2024, specializing in digitalized mechatronic drive technology and currently providing work to around 2900 people, WITTENSTEIN has repositioned itself several times while filling the founding Wittenstein family’s guiding principle – “being one with the future” – with life. The wide range of products and solutions which the WITTENSTEIN group will be bringing with it to the Hannover Messe from April 22-26, 2024 is irrefutable evidence.

Focus on digitalization

The WITTENSTEIN group sees its future in cybertronic solutions for a digitalized industry. The goal: to play a key role in shaping digital transformation in drive technology and machine construction. With this in mind, the functionality of selected mechatronic products and systems – with integrated electronics, sensors and firmware – is now being transferred to cybertronic products and systems that can also communicate and interconnect with each other.

Gearboxes made by WITTENSTEIN alpha will be among the exhibits at the Hannover booth. Thanks to cynapse^® functionality, they are intelligent and communication-enabled, laying the foundation for Smart Services, new digital business models and innovative future technologies – as demonstrated, for example, by their incorporation into OCEANERGY’s Kite Hydrogen Ships for the production of green hydrogen.

The highlights from WITTENSTEIN cyber motor will include the new, safety-certified cyber^® simco^® drive 2 servo drive with a PROFIsafe interface, which in combination with a drive actuator in the compact cyber^® iTAS^® system 2 servo drive system for automated guided vehicles (AGVs). The PROFIsafe interface makes an important contribution to the next-level safety architecture by reducing the complexity of the safety and control technology as well as the time and costs for commissioning and servicing AGVs. It also simplifies the configuration and documentation of the safety architecture.

The Galaxie^® robustness line and Galaxie^® accuracy line from WITTENSTEIN galaxie – two enhanced-performance gearbox series that are optimized for specific applications – will likewise be on show together with derived digital twin concepts that enable the life cycle of a user’s products to be linked directly with the manufacturing environment, thus opening the path to greater digital value creation.

WITTENSTEIN motion control will be exhibiting a redundant AC servo drive that was specially designed for offshore extraction of natural gas. The fact that it can be integrated into the extraction station’s condition monitoring and predictive maintenance from a depth of up to 3000 meters – resulting in the highest levels of functional reliability and availability – is what sets this all-electric actuator apart.

WITTENSTEIN subsidiary attocube systems will be showing the latest IDS3010 – an ultra-compact, three-axis displacement sensor for nano-accurate applications with an integrated web server that integrates digitally into the operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) of machines and production equipment.

IT and OT are increasingly converging, and industrial security is a major priority for baramundi software, another company of the WITTENSTEIN group. The baramundi Management Suite in the spotlight in Hannover is a solution for managing a wide range of endpoints efficiently in typical IIoT network landscapes and securing production reliably.

Resense – a joint venture set up by measuring equipment specialist WIKA Alexander Wiegand and WITTENSTEIN to shape the future market for haptic sensors – will be demonstrating the world’s smallest six-axis force / torque sensors. With their unprecedented hollow-shaft design and compact size, they provide machines in medical technology, robotics and precision manipulation with a sense of touch.

At the forefront of innovation in cybertronic drive technology

Today, WITTENSTEIN is at the forefront of innovation worldwide in cybertronic drive technology. As an international high-tech group, the company develops customized products, systems and solutions for highly dynamic motion, maximum-precise positioning and smart networking – surprising and exciting its customers in these fields time and time again with groundbreaking innovations.