The Junction Box: Whatever happened to all the VSDs?
28 June 2019
In his third column, exclusive to Connectivity, Richard Stone, the founder of Stone Junction – the first PR agency for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, asks how the variable speed drive became lost in a sea of Industry 4.0 faff.
Did you know that fitting a variable speed drive, or similar method of motor control, such as a soft start or variable frequency drive, to every variable speed motor application in the UK (that doesn’t currently have one) would save enough energy to allow all of the hipsters in London’s thriving Shoreditch community, to shave their beards into exquisite points everyday for 276 million years?*
It would save enough energy to send the Uttoxeter Korfball team to Mars 653 times or even allow everyone in the UK to watch all eight series of Game of Thrones at least once*.
But somehow, in all the distraction created by robots taking our jobs, everybody’s toothbrush having its own IP address and nearly the entire world consisting only of things that have been 3D printed, we seem to have forgotten about variable speed drives. And yet they are the most fundamental building block of automation.
It’s not that people have stopped buying drives, obviously. The latest, inevitable, market report from Research&Markets.com claims it’s a $20.85 billion market, growing at a healthy 5.4 percent per year. And yet estimates I’ve been given verbally by drives manufacturers and experts from trade bodies, suggest that between 70 and 90 percent of motors in a variable speed application still have no form of control.
Sex drive
I think the problem is that drives manufacturers have stopped thinking they are sexy, certainly in comparison to things like AI, deep learning, mobile robotics, edge computing and Automation as a Service (AaaS). As a result, they aren’t hogging the limelight in the way they deserve, given the fundamental role that the humble VSD plays in energy saving technology and the UK’s automated future.
As a PR consultant, I literally can’t count the number of briefs I’ve received over the last couple of years from automation companies who want to be positioned in relation to Industry 4.0. Don’t get me wrong, I love a buzzword and Industry 4.0 is probably my all-time favourite. But it is nearly a decade old now and, you know what, the thing we used to call the drives industry is still pretty-damn interesting.
Cool stuff
But don’t despair, there is cool stuff going on, albeit often cloaked in the vail of AI or something similarly nifty sounding. For instance, ABB is piloting the world’s first industrial application using artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G wireless technology to assist in the assembly of drives at a plant in Helsinki, Finland. The application will give real time feedback to workers, based on data collected with a vision system. This has the Junction Box thumbs up of cool.
Equally cool is German engineer, Juan Carlos González Villar, who was named Engineer of the Year at the Motion Control Industry (MCI) Awards, last month in Solihull, UK.
Villar, from Kabel.Consult.Ing, won for his patented Energy Light drive system and networked, continuously-variable transmission system. It improves energy efficiency in drive applications using patented motor technology, clever controls, and a lightweight composite construction. This also has our thumbs up of cool.
Last, but not least, we liked last year’s Control Techniques marketing campaign, which used Eddie Hall, the world’s strongest man, to represent the company’s power. We thought this campaign had a bit of swagger, so, it also gets a cool badge.
Bottom line
The bottom line though is that AI, deep learning, mobile robotics, and anything else you care to mention are all things that could be positioned in relation to the drives industry, not vice versa.
In fact, the concept of Industry 4.0 was pretty much invented to sell drives. There is much greater potential for drives manufacturers and distributors to position themselves as a leading player in digitalisation, instead of a slightly uncool older brother. So, say it loud and say it proud, “I make drives!” and don’t get lost in a sea of Industry 4.0 faff.
Richard Stone is the founder of Stone Junction, a specialist technical PR agency delivering international and digital PR and marketing services for scientific, engineering and technology companies. He loves making up statistics, having a hipster beard and chatting to people on LinkedIn. So, drop him a connection request or send him a message here. If you’ve been awarded a cool badge, ring him up, they may or may, not really exist.
*There is a very good chance that these statistics are made up. But some of them sound convincing and there are lots of other stats around that are similar and true.
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