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We know that there is a lot of apprehension by small and medium businesses to really jump into Industry 4.0, IoT and automation. There are a lot of reasons why, including the big financial investment. So we took up a project at the University of New Hampshire’s John Olson Advanced Manufacturing Center to create a demonstration cell that would show how a small/medium manufacturer could embark on the journey toward getting to full automation and IoT data utilization.

Despite the industry’s growth and prosperity, the number of aircraft industry players remains relatively constant. While the industrial consolidation of the last two decades has ceased, there are few signs of significant new market players. A very broad range of factors is responsible for this stasis.

In today’s aerospace industry, manufacturers often feel bound to operate a certain way because it’s a tried-and-true, validated process or because the physics of aerospace dictate certain limitations on materials, systems and designs.

Increased demand for economically manufacturing challenging aerospace parts faster with higher quality surface finishes is spurring on the development of new bonds and grains for grinding wheels. The latest superabrasives can be an excellent choice for aerospace manufacturers doing production grinding.

For aerospace part production, machine tool volumetric accuracy is vitally important. To define it, machine geometry is a function of moving a certain amount of mass along the way system. This movement of mass needs to move straight without pitch, yaw, and roll, because any variation of these three movements is amplified as you get further and further away from the machine tool’s way system.

Automated industrial vision systems have become a key component of quality conformance inspection for many industrial processes. They are used to detect defects at high rates far exceeding the capability of the human eye in industries ranging from food processing to electronics and automobile manufacturing.

Fiber laser welding is gaining attention in aerospace manufacturing. Manufacturers are looking for ways to automate manual arc-welding processes and to upgrade CO2 and lamp-pumped Nd:YAG laser welding processes to ensure greater consistency and to improve their productivity.

It is no secret that composite materials are extremely attractive to the aviation and aerospace industries, where there has been a significant increase in the use of carbon fiber. What’s not to like? Carbon fiber material has a proven track record of providing superior strength with the added benefit of substantial weight savings.

Some of my colleagues at MESA International, including President Mike Yost, have postulated that knowledge workers should be at the center of all smart manufacturing implementation projects. The goal is not necessarily to automate old production processes.

German metrology developer Jenoptik is shifting “from focusing on metrology and laser processing standalone equipment to integrated automation solutions for the automotive industry and other new applications, including aerospace,” so it recently bought Prodomax Automation in Barrie, Ontario, and Five Lakes Automation, in Michigan, Prodomax Co-CEO Carolyn Garvey said.