For machine shops in a competitive global marketplace, keeping spindles running and making product is the only way to stay in business. Still, adding a new piece of equipment, even with the promise of improving the efficiency of your existing ones, may be a difficult sell to management.
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.
Manufacturers who have deployed the digital or smart factory have put down their pencils, found new uses for their clipboards and closed their spreadsheet programs in favor of using real-time data gleaned from condition monitoring of their machinery.
Before harmonizing new technology onto the manufacturing floor, critical steps include determining the business problems to be solved and securing buy-in from all stakeholders, industry leaders said recently during an AeroDef conference panel talk on manufacturing production harmonization.
FANUC has made real one of the promises of Industry 4.0, that of predictive maintenance for factory equipment, with its Zero Down Time IoT solution. ZDT can be applied to any of FANUC’s robotic arms and their peripherals.
Industrial computed tomography is a cost-effective, reliable way to meet intensifying
requirements for qualifying both the design of aerospace parts and the materials needed for their construction.
Vollmer of America completed its move into a new 30,000-square-foot facility near Pittsburgh International Airport in June of 2020 and participated in the Las Vegas AWFS Fair in July this year.
Sandvik Coromant’s Package Selector Application analyzes a 3D CAD model of a product and recommends the smallest packaging possible using an AI algorithm that calculates the product’s rotation.
Fastems has published “The CNC Automation Guide for Existing Machine Tools” to help manufacturers through a transition into using FMS.
Over the last 30 years, the electrical power demand on aircraft has increased by a factor of 10. While the growth in aerospace E/E systems has introduced new challenges, it is also creating new opportunities.
