Retail Tech Day

Vending machines, reverse vending machines or baking stations require automation - with minimal costs and high reliability. In this workshop, you will learn how to use modular low-cost components to realise motion sequences quickly, from product ejection and lifting movements to the preparation of fresh meals. With live demo: How a retail vending machine can be automated for less than €1,000.

Despite the fact that installation space for vending machines in retail and catering is extremely limited, they must be highly functional, quiet and maintenance-free. This workshop will show you how to use components in a clever way to realise long-lasting movements even in the smallest installation spaces. With best practices for snack vending machines, pick-up loaders and coffee machines.

Short development cycles and customised requirements have long been standard in the vending and retail sector. In this workshop you will learn how to generate functional components quickly and economically - directly from CAD, without tool costs, ideal for prototypes, special parts and small series. We will show you examples from retail practice. Challenge us and bring along your most demanding series part and we will print it together with you on site.

When a robot is cooking, the machine must be hygienic and easy to clean. Hygiene requirements, e.g. in the catering trade, supermarket or petrol station, are strict. This workshop shows how the right design in addition to careful choice of lubrication-free components and food-compliant materials can enable users to develop maintenance-free and easy-to-clean vending machines.

Efficiency begins in the design phase - reduce development times, avoid over-dimensioning through targeted design and digital service life calculation. Increasing requirements with decreasing margins: in retail and vending machine construction, products need to be developed quickly, adjusted flexibly and designed in a cost-optimised way. In this workshop, you will learn how to use online tools and the modular system to design your constructions not only faster, but also optimise them in terms of costs, service life and functionality.

The playground for automation enthusiasts: experience the Customer Testing Area and let the dynamics and possibilities of Low Cost Automation inspire you.

Production, test laboratory and research on 90,000m². On a tour you will get to know the flexible igus® factory with production from plain bearings to the igus:bike and the industry's largest testing area with 5,500m².