The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is set to award $10 million in funding this year to the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) here, UI Labs CEO Caralynn Nowinski Collens, said this morning. UI Labs is DMDII’s parent organization.
Swiss-style machine tools can be a good choice for making complex parts. On the downside, however, Swiss machining itself has a reputation of being complex—and, therefore, more difficult to master than standard machining.
Do you have what it takes to raise your milling productivity to the next level? In addition to the requisite know-how, you need cutters and machine tools that will allow you to employ milling techniques that exceed what’s normally possible. Aided by the right hardware, you may soon be performing feats like pushing your feed rates to new highs and cutting harder materials than ever before.
On June 22-23, SME hosted a Smart Manufacturing Working Group meeting at Texas A&M University (College Station, TX) followed by an international workshop on Smart Manufacturing for the Factory of the Future.
In a perfect CNC world, the first part is always a good one. There’s no need for extra blanks or barstock. Setup times are only as long as is needed to swap out a few tools and load a new program. There’s never a crash, never the need to reprogram an inefficient bit of code. The operator just pushes the green button and out pops a finished workpiece minutes or hours later.
SME is publishing a series of Smart Manufacturing Industry Reports, with the third being released at IMTS this month. The reports, available at sme.org/reports, detail the advantages of smart manufacturing, the challenges to implementing digital solutions, and, finally, keys to implementing the technologies and tools.
Smart factory systems benefit from improved technologies, as well as proven applications.
For Dale Mickelson, Yasda product manager at Methods Machine Tools Inc. (Sudbury, MA) and author of several books on hard milling, tackling heat-resistant superalloys (HRSAs) requires the perfect combination of machine, workholding, tooling, tool paths and coolant.
Overall, there are two overriding customer needs: reducing cycle time and machine downtime. They want higher feed rates and depth of cut for greater metal removal.
IIoT expert Steve Jones who will speak Oct. 29 at “The Best of SMX” (smxevent.com),
describes in detail the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), as well as AI/machine learning
and other promising technology for manufacturing’s future. Like with many things in life,
it is important to set goals first, the Steelcase executive says. Not sure where to begin
with IIoT? Never fear: Jones has the answer.