Author: Contributing Editor Bruce Morey
Date: 5/14/2013
To a mechanical engineer, the human body is filled with perplexing shapes. Replacing its parts, or designing tools to operate on it, is a challenge. The body’s uneven, organic shapes are difficult to replicate with standard machine tools, which are more accustomed to cutting straight lines or drilling round holes. But additive manufacturing, which gives designers the freedom to create complex, organic shapes, seems a natural fit.
Full Article Author: Debbie Holton, Director of Events and Industry Strategy, SME
Date: 5/13/2013
As the plane touched down in Beijing, I didn’t know what to expect. I had traveled internationally for business many times but never to Asia or specifically China. I was excited to embark on a new adventure, but a little nervous about being in a country where I was obviously a stranger and couldn’t speak a word of the language.I was fortunate to have been invited by AMT – The Association for Manufacturing Technology – to visit CIMT 13 – the China International Machine Tool Show as their guest in the USA pavilion.
Full Article Author: Materialise Press Release
Date: 4/24/2013
Leuven, Belgium – Materialise is proud to announce the winners of the Mimics Innovation Awards. Through the years, the Materialise’s Mimics Innovation Suite has become an industry standard for processing and editing anatomical data from CT and MRI scans.
Full Article Author: Editor in Chief Sarah A. Webster
Date: 3/27/2013
Additive manufacturing is growing fast in the medical field, fueled by more materials and a better understanding of the possibilities.
Full Article Author: The ExOne Company
Date: 2/7/2013
The ExOne Co., a global provider of 3D printing machines and printed products to industrial companies, has announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 5 million shares of common stock and 300,000 shares of common stock from Rochewell Holdings Inc. at a price of $18 a share.
Full Article Author: Senior Editor Patrick Waurzyniak
Date: 1/9/2013
The ExOne Co. (North Huntingdon, PA), a developer of 3D printing machines and printed products, on Jan. 9 filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock. ExOne was founded in 2005 as a spinoff of Extrude Hone Corp. (Irwin, PA), a developer of precision nontraditional machining processes and automated systems that was acquired by cutting tool developer Kennametal (Latrobe, PA) in March 2005.
Full Article Author: Edited by Senior Editor Patrick Waurzyniak
Date: 10/1/2012
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers will play an integral role in the new National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII), which was launched by the Obama Administration in August and will serve as a pilot for a much broader national manufacturing initiative.
Full Article Date: 8/29/2012
When State-of-the-Art Micromachining Isn't Good Enough. Originally held on Wednesday, Aug. 29. This webinar, which takes a look at breakthroughs inmicromachining, was conducted by Richard Chen, vice president of Design Engineering at Microfabrica Inc.
Full Article Author: Manufacturing Engineering Media Staff
Date: 8/16/2012
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) will be playing an integral role in the new National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute. The news was announced this morning by the U.S. Department of Commerce and Department of Defense in Youngstown, Ohio.
Full Article Author: Senior Editor James D. Sawyer
Date: 7/1/2012
The Great Recession was not kind to manufacturing, but the industry has bounced back in fine fashion. It grew a phenomenal 91% from 2009 to 2010 and an impressive 66% from 2010 to 2011. Thus far this year manufacturing has grown 20%—beating forecasts.
Full Article Author: Edited by Senior Editor Patrick Waurzyniak
Date: 7/1/2012
With continued rising labor and other manufacturing costs for overseas imports from China and other countries, "near-shoring" increasingly is being viewed as an opportunity to better serve US demand, according to a recent report by AlixPartners LLP (New York), a global business advisory firm.
Full Article Author: Editor in Chief Sarah A. Webster
Date: 4/1/2012
With every passing year, additive manufacturing grows by leaps and bounds. In innovation. In sales. And in capturing the imagination of makers of things, both new and old. There’s no denying the coolness factor of AM. But when will AM reach its tipping point where it becomes a big dog in the world of manufacturing? What is holding this exciting, efficient technology back?
Full Article Author: Terry Wohlers, Principal Consultant & President, Wohlers Associates Inc.
Date: 4/1/2012
Additive manufacturing (AM) has never received so much attention. The Economist, Forbes, USA Today, and countless other mainstream and technical publications and blogs have brought the technology to the forefront. Large aerospace companies, such as Boeing, GE Aviation, and Airbus, are hard at work qualifying AM processes and materials for flight.
Full Article Author: Terry Wohlers, Principal Consultant & President, Wohlers Associates Inc.
Date: 3/31/2012
In early March, the White House announced new efforts to support manufacturing innovation. Central to the announcement is a proposed investment of $1 billion for a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. It would involve up to 15 Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation across the U.S., each one serving as a regional hub of manufacturing excellence.
Full Article Author: Terry Wohlers
Date: 4/1/2011
Additive manufacturing (AM) is a process of joining materials to make objects from 3-D model data, usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing methodologies. This wide range of technologies, which includes the sintering and deposition of materials, is increasingly being used for the manufacture of parts that go into products.
Full Article Author: Senior Editor Jim Lorincz
Date: 4/1/2010
When you walk into the Redeye On Demand facility, you enter into one version of the factory of the future. There you will see a bank of 100 high-end Fortus fused-deposition modeling machines from Stratasys that provide the capacity to build real, functional parts with production-grade thermoplastics directly from CAD data. It's the fulfillment of the quest for direct-digital manufacturing in which Redeye's motto — "design one, prototype ten, manufacture one thousand" — is being realized. Welcome to the world of additive manufacturing.
Full Article Author: Terry Wohlers, Principal Consultant and President, Wohlers Associates
Date: 1/1/2010
Each year, Wohlers Associates publishes its annual report on the additive manufacturing field. This article is based on the executive summary of Wohlers Report 2009. The complete 250-page report is available from the company.
Full Article Author: Senior Editor Robert B. Aronson
Date: 4/1/2009
"Rapid prototyping" is no longer a suitable catch-all term that defines an entire industry. It is just one of many applications for a field more properly called additive-fabrication (AF) technology. (Machining operations are subtractive in that a product is created by cutting away material. With AF, products are made by adding material.)
Full Article Author: Terry Wohlers, President, Wohlers Associates Inc.
Date: 1/1/2009
New methods of manufacturing are bringing about fundamental changes in the way products are designed and delivered. With advances in additive fabrication (AF) technology, it's now possible to conceive a product and deliver that product to a customer within days. A growing number of manufacturing organizations of all sizes are using AF technology for custom and limited-edition replacement-part manufacturing, products, and short-run production.
Full Article Author: Contributing Editor Bruce Morey
Date: 2/1/2008
Wouldn't it be great to get an order and ship out a completed part with little pre-planning or manufacturing engineering required beyond plugging a CAD file into a machine that spits out the finished part? Especially if it's a single machine that produces an unlimited variety of parts. That is the promise of direct digital manufacturing (DDM) or "rapid manufacturing." Size, surface finish, and material limitations remain, though system developers are continuing to improve this technology. Manufacturing engineers are just beginning to understand how to use it.
Full Article Author: Senior Editor Patrick Waurzyniak
Date: 2/1/2007
Direct-metal and plastics-based prototyping processes enable manufacturers to quickly produce parts and tooling the greatest benefits." To order a hardcopy reproduction of this article, click here. To purchase digital reprints or reproduction licenses, please contact the resource center at service@sme.org or call (800) 733-4763.
Full Article Author: Manufacturing Engineering Media Staff
Additive manufacturing is grabbing headlines these days. Just because everyone is talking about it, however, does not mean everyone really understands it. Fortus 3D Production Systems will explain where additive manufacturing is now and where it is going by sponsoring a webinar entitled “Additive Manufacturing 101: Changing the Future of Product Development and Manufacturing.” Fortus is a business unit of Stratasys Inc.
Full Article Author: Senior Editor James D. Sawyer
Acutronic USA (Pittsburgh), ExOne (North Huntingdon, PA) and Paramount Industries (Langhorne, PA) are the first recipients of Pennsylvania’s Research for Advanced Manufacturing (RAMP) awards.
Full Article