Innovation & Precision In Motion Control — An Interview With Bill Hennessey

ALIO Industries, an Allied Motion company, is a leader in producing high-precision motion control systems with ultra-precise point and path positioning performance that is NIST-traceable. The company’s off-the-shelf and customized motion control solutions are the most precise and repeatable in the world, all backed by the industry’s first 3-year warranty. In this article Bill Hennessey, Founder and President of ALIO Industries gives his views on the ever changing and evolving demand for more and more precise motion control solutions, and discusses his and ALIO’s approach to the creation of technology that stimulates innovation across industry.

Q. Can you provide an overview of ALIO and its core focus as an ultra-precise motion control specialist technology supplier?

BH. From day one ALIO’s focus was to push the nanometer envelop using novel ideas from machining to assembly. Personally,  I thought nanometer-level motion control was needed as far back as the JDS Uniphase Corporation (JDSU) days in the 1990s when they were designing and manufacturing a variety of products for optical communications networks. The Dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) optical transmission technology that took over from the JDSU technologies in the 2000s definitely needed nanometer-level motion control. For industries such as this where precision was so vital, quality was also a must as were motion control solutions that were robust industrial products not just devices to be used in a lab. I used my machine tool and industrial robots background to build quality, precise motion control systems that were fit for high volume manufacturing scenarios. At the same time as we applied for the patent for our novel Piezo Hybrid Hexapod, along came Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical transmission technology,  and this industry suddenly did not need as many devices since a fiber could now carry many different channels.