Festo has appointed Barr and Paatz of Totnes, Devon, UK, as one of its high technology integration partners. The south-west firm specialises in automating production processes, and will provide complete turnkey systems incorporating Festo technology such as Ethernet-enabled PLCs, Fieldbus-connected valve terminals, integrated electrical drives and Checkbox vision inspection systems. It will focus on plastics, pharmaceuticals, electronics, food packaging and other areas of process automation, where Barr and Paatz’s system design and integration skills and Festo’s clean pneumatic and linear motion technology are applicable. Focusing on automation technology using pneumatic and electric components and systems, Festo offers 23,000 products, including drives and drive accessories, valves and valve terminals, control technology, compressed air preparation and high performance sensors. In the UK, Festo operates a network of 170 stockist locations and has created a second tier of approved integration partners, capable of engineering complete systems directly. Now, it has introduced another handful of high-tech integration partners, of which Barr and Paatz is among the first. These will focus solely on the latest automation products.
