Hot fun in the summertime

Summer is my favorite time of year. However, here in the South, humidity levels can swell to almost unbearable levels. Actual temperatures may be 85-90 degrees, but high humidity levels can easily make the air feel 10 degrees higher or more. This year, most of our nation is experiencing extreme heat. On July 20th, 17 states registered temperatures of 100 degrees or higher. In Chicago, ABC News reported temperatures at Lake Michigan reached 110 degrees. So, what do we do? Make the best of it but be safe. The most important thing is to stay hydrated. Drink plenty of non carbonated beverages such as water and sports drinks. We enjoy refreshing activities such as swimming, boating, skiing or visit the local ice cream stand with family and friends.

This month’s newsletter contains all the latest information, including company news, new product information, our latest webinar schedule, and more. Be sure to take a break with the Lighter Side.

Don’t forget to send us information, about your applications. We are always excited to learn the unique ways customers use AutomationDirect products.

It’s time for Control Design magazine’s annual Readers’ Choice voting. This is the time when, as subscribers to Control Design, machine controls professionals use their collective experience and evaluation of the product value offered by the technology providers in this industry. To participate, simply check your email for the Control Design’s Readers’ Choice Award voting ballot. Complete as much of the survey as your experience allows. If you're a machine builder or system integrator and you haven't received your invitation, contact Control Design’s Editor in Chief to let him know you would like to vote.

Educational pages

AutomationDirect recently launched a web portal for educators and students.We have supported various schools, colleges, and universities for many years, primarily via our standing 15% Educational Discount and, in some cases, donations of our cost-effective automation equipment. The new web portal provides an easier way for educators to get information about our products and it offers some hints about which of our products are most popular in the classroom.

Whether you are teaching high school vocational tech, continuing education at a community/technical college, or engineering in a four-year degree program, everyone can benefit from low prices on high-quality automation equipment. We have PLCs which are less expensive than some textbooks and our manuals are always available via free download.  Qualified educators at all levels should visit the portal for details on our educational programs.

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CFE Media LLC and Interconnecting Automation to Provide Educational Videos on Industrial Automation Products to Control Engineers

CFE Media LLC and Interconnecting Automation have joined forces to deliver specialized educational content for engineering professionals looking for automation training.

This partnership gives manufacturing professionals immediate access to a large database of videos covering all aspects of industrial automation topics including I/O, drives, motors, motion, PLCs, and PACs. As part of the agreement, CFE Media and Interconnecting Automation will co-promote the training videos to the CFE Media audience and host the videos on its Website for easy access.

“Interconnecting Automation gives CFE Media the opportunity to provide engineers with basic to advanced self-service automation training via online video”, said Steve Rourke, CEO, CFE Media. “This announcement supports CFE’s strategy to provide the highest value in engineering content at right time in an easy-to-consume format. We look forward to providing our audiences with expanded content that can help them better perform their jobs.”
“There is clear value to both Interconnecting Automation and CFE Media from this partnership. Our tutorials cover time-saving suggestions on the basics, as well as showing programming examples that are common on more advanced automation controls.” said Interconnecting Automation owner Doug Bell.

New Kickstart videos

Be sure to check out our latest Kickstart videos. Each brief video provides an informative overview of specific new products from AutomationDirect.

Our newest videos include:

• 65mm mushroom pushbuttons
• Rectangular sensors

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Upcoming FREE Webinars

We continue to have great response to our Web seminars. Our 45-minute shows feature both product overviews and more detailed application-based examples. Each seminar includes a question and answer time where our hosts address questions from viewers. You can also view recorded episodes at your convenience.

Upcoming Web Seminars include:

• Productivity3000 Advanced III –
  August 3rd 2:00PM EST
• CLICK PLC Software Advanced –
  August 24th 2:00PM EST
• Motor Controls –
  September 14th 2:00PM EST
• Ethernet Communications –
  October 5th 2:00PM EST

Register today to attend the free online seminars. If you don’t see a specific topic of interest, contact us with your idea. Our team will consider it for future seminars.

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Application Innovations

Red Bank Hydro featured on Sustainableplant.com

In West Columbia, South Carolina, a micro hydroelectric power plant generates 20kW of power, and is controlled by equipment from AutomationDirect. Follow this link to www.sustainableplant.com to read complete article. You can check out our own library of application stories here.

… Mr. Edison tells us, the steam engine is emitting its last gasps. A century hence it will be as remote as antiquity as the lumbering coach of Tudor days, which took a week to travel from Yorkshire to London. In the year 2011 such railway trains as survive will be driven at incredible speed by electricity (which will also be the motive force of all the world's machinery), generated by "hydraulic" wheels.

But the traveler of the future, says a writer in Answers, will largely scorn such earth crawling. He will fly through the air, swifter than any swallow, at a speed of two hundred miles an hour, in colossal machines, which will enable him to breakfast in London, transact business in Paris and eat his luncheon in Cheapside.

The house of the next century will be furnished from basement to attic with steel, at a sixth of the present cost -- of steel so light that it will be as easy to move a sideboard as it is today to lift a drawing room chair. The baby of the twenty-first century will be rocked in a steel cradle; his father will sit in a steel chair at a steel dining table, and his mother's boudoir will be sumptuously equipped with steel furnishings, converted by cunning varnishes to the semblance of rosewood, or mahogany, or any other wood her ladyship fancies.

Books of the coming century will all be printed leaves of nickel, so light to hold that the reader can enjoy a small library in a single volume. A book two inches thick will contain forty thousand pages, the equivalent of a hundred volumes; six inches in aggregate thickness, it would suffice for all the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And each volume would weigh less than a pound.

More amazing still, this American wizard sounds the death knell of gold as a precious metal. "Gold," he says, "has even now but a few years to live. The day is near when bars of it will be as common and as cheap as bars of iron or blocks of steel.

"We are already on the verge of discovering the secret of transmuting metals, which are all substantially the same in matter, though combined in different proportions."

Before long it will be an easy matter to convert a truck load of iron bars into as many bars of virgin gold.

In the magical days to come there is no reason why our great liners should not be of solid gold from stem to stern; why we should not ride in golden taxicabs, or substituted gold for steel in our drawing room suites. Only steel will be the more durable, and thus the cheaper in the long run.

Thanks for your time!
Comments or suggestions for topics in future newsletters can be directed to newsletter@automationdirect.com

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