Like the United Nations’ international delegates who use interpreters to understand each other, robots, machines and other industrial components from various vendors speak different computer languages and need translators to help them communicate.
The COVID-19 black swan event disrupted the global economy and forced companies to rapidly rethink their processes, operations and supply networks.
Smart manufacturing is now being rapidly adopted by a much wider range of business sectors.
To get to smart manufacturing, the industry needs integration, simulation and analysis.
Mar-Bal Inc. has merged its AltraSet Composite Technologies company with Lattice Composites, Riverside, Calif.
Tacoma, Washington-based Tool Gauge manufactures precision metal and plastic components and assemblies for the aerospace industry.
Composite materials consist of fibers—in the aerospace industry, they are typically glass, carbon or kevlar—suspended in a matrix of epoxy resin.
The concept of the digital twin in A&D was born in the 1970s, when NASA began employing full-scale virtual mock-ups of space capsules to forecast the performance of machines in outer space.
Risk-management technology is beginning to help manufacturers cope with the supply-chain upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Thomas Derry, CEO of the Institute for Supply Management: “We are a lot better at managing risk than even 10 years ago.”
Rich, General Motors recently invested in 17 production-grade FDM printers, intending to use them for 3D-printed tooling. The term “tooling” is quite broad, however. Can you share details about what types of tooling GM and others are 3D printing, and why?
