Basic trends in modern manufacturing are driving growth in 3D optical metrology. “One is the highly complex and high-tech material that manufacturers are using today. For example, in the aerospace turbine blade market, they simply cannot touch the part like they used to—the surface finish of the material is too readily affected by any kind of contact metrology."
At the Nirvana Machine Shop on planet Perfection, every workpiece is clamped to a custom-built fixture mounted on a dedicated machine tool. Each workpiece is dimensionally identical to the one before and the one after. All the fixtures are totally automatic—instantly positioning, clamping, machining, inspecting, and releasing the part with the ultimate precision.
Remember the boy with endless learning capacities in the 2001 film “AI Artificial Intelligence”? He’s quickly coming to life. Today, AI is no longer fictional; it’s reality.
The Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) today kicked off a new cybersecurity initiative focused on manufacturing.
Celebrating its 80th year, Kennametal, the Latrobe, (PA), tooling manufacturer, says it has solved the age-long problem of tool stability when drilling in deep cavities, alongside tall shoulders, and past bulky fixtures. Reaching deep inside a workpiece to drill holes can be challenging.
Scanning metrology providers respond to varied needs; software improves to help engineers with scan data
Meeting the needs of the evolving digital manufacturing initiative, Open Mind Technologies (Needham, MA) has recently partnered with Heidenhain TNC controls (Schaumburg, IL) to provide exclusive first use of their new NC code-based machining simulation solution hyperMILL Virtual Machining.
The road to manufacturing success today runs through the mountain of data that tools are generating in metalcutting applications, and most importantly communicating and reacting to in real time on the shop floor.
When it comes to using new materials, medical and dental device makers are ultra-conservative—because they need to clear devices through a thicket of federal regulators.
While suppliers are under more pressure than ever to produce precision parts faster and with less scrap, in-process metrology means manufacturers can detect as soon as possible when a part is going wrong, correcting the issue quickly and saving it from scrap.
