Keeping products clean is becoming a more significant part of manufacturing as standards for cleanliness, deburring, and finish grow more stringent.
Visitors to the Valley of the Sun were recently treated to a dizzying display of software technology at Arizona’s Phoenix Convention Center. From June 4-7, the Siemens PLM Connection—Americas 2018 user conference hosted thousands of visitors from hundreds of manufacturing companies.
Manufacturers are accelerating use of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, according to a survey of 66 companies.
In preparation for mass customization, for starters, Japanese and German tech research officials today committed to expanding their joint work to establish a “social-technical or maybe ‘cyber-social’ environment where ‘digital companions’ and production lines communicate with humans” working in manufacturing, Andreas Dengel said in an interview with Smart Manufacturing magazine here at the CeBIT (Centrum der Büroautomation und Informationstechnologie und Telekommunikation) fair.
From cutting various thicknesses of sheet metal and metal plate or different widths of tubing to navigating intricate materials or process issues, some of the laser industry’s leading suppliers have weighed in with tips and insights into their novel solutions.
The Fabricating & Lasers pavilion of IMTS shows how makers of machine tools have to keep improving their product lineup. For one thing, customer expectations continue to rise.
At the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) in Chicago on March 27, Siemens demonstrated its approach to the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” At its annual U.S. Innovation Day, Siemens demonstrated real-world applications of digital solutions that it says will reduce costs, increase speed, develop new business models, and improve quality of life.
Lasers — well-established tools in the manufacture of medical devices—are continuing to break ground by producing smaller, more precise and more functional parts thanks to faster pulse speeds at lower cost, new applications and the marriage of laser processing to Swiss-style machining.
Cutting tool maker Shape-Master Tool Co. (Kirkland, IL) needed to expand its tool grinding capability beyond that of its conventional machines or run the risk of losing work to the competition.
There have been many process improvement trends in manufacturing over the decades, and none have had more significant ROI than machine monitoring. The increase in machine monitoring is owed in large part to the rise in popularity of the open and royalty-free interconnectivity standard MTConnect.
