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In my capacity as the Chair of the Council of the Manufacturing USA institute directors, I often get asked about trends in U.S. advanced manufacturing.

Changes in health care are driving more innovative tooling, including new machining strategies and complex cutting tools that help deliver more patient-centered solutions.

We all know the buzzwords circulating around digital data and the factory. You have heard them—Industry 4.0, smart factories, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI). The question we all have is how will this impact workers in the long term? What do these terms really mean? Nevertheless, both traditional software suppliers and makers of advanced manufacturing equipment are offering digital solutions.

Burrs, sharp edges, and rough surfaces plague even the most precise metal-cutting or forming process. Deburring and finishing can often be treated as the step-child of a manufacturing process, but its importance is growing as tolerances get tighter and precision devices become the norm.

Even though it’s been around since the 1950s, when engineering-grade resins were first introduced, many manufacturers still are not familiar with the many benefits that metal-to-plastic conversion provides.

Until the middle of 2010, first-tier subcontract machinist, JJ Churchill, could produce turbine blades only if they had their fir-tree root-forms preground elsewhere, or if they were subsequently added by another subcontractor. No longer is this the case.

Micro components continue to shrink in size, demanding ever-greater precision and improved handling of parts with sub-micron-sized features. New approaches in micro machining technology include higher-precision systems from traditional micro machining developers, as well as techniques using additive manufacturing processes and semiconductor wafer-scale technology on the smallest of micro parts.

When you walk into the Redeye On Demand facility in Eden Prairie, MN, 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 (FDM) machines from Stratasys that provide the capacity to build real, functional parts with production-grade thermoplastics directly from CAD data.

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, has been a game changer in how products are designed, produced and manufactured. But 3D printed parts don’t just come out of the machine ready to use, sometimes intensive manual post-processing is required. Jeff Mize, CEO of PostProcess Technologies, sits down with Chris Mahar, Associate Editor, to discuss their automated post-processing technology and how fully digitalized additive manufacturing is further benefiting the industry.

Mark Kirby, Registered Professional Engineer and Additive Manufacturing Business Manager for Renishaw Canada and Bruce Morey, Senior Technical Editor for Manufacturing Engineering Magazine discuss the pluses and minuses of the still-emerging 3D printing technology that is sweeping the business press. We will take a look at common misconceptions and what, in our opinion, could be things to watch out for if any of our listeners are thinking about adopting 3D printing for their applications.