What to do When Your Motion System Throws You a Curve

In the ongoing drive to reduce production costs, one trend at manufacturing facilities is grouping production work stations as closely as possible to minimize material movement and to conserve valuable floor space. Doing this means that materials have to move along increasingly complex curvilinear paths. Most commercially-available guide and actuator systems are linear designs and can’t easily handle non-linear paths. However, curvilinear guide and actuator systems, such as guide-wheel based ring and track systems, are available for such situations.