TL Technologies Inc., based in Lancaster PA, opened nine years ago with a vision of becoming a lights out producer of precision machine products. Working out of a 10,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility, they specialize in mid- to high-volume production runs for complex parts with challenging dimensional tolerances.
Purchasing and supply executives expect manufacturing to continue expanding in 2019, according to a survey by the Institute for Supply Management.
The world of additive manufacturing (AM), commonly referred to as 3D printing, is quickly changing. The technology allows companies to manufacture products faster, with greater variation, and often with entirely new forms and functions.
My involvement in SME and its AeroDef event began in 2014, when I first presented an Adaptive Machining Overview at AeroDef 2014 in Long Beach, Calif. At the time, the conference was relatively small in terms of attendees and exhibitors in comparison to the explosion of other engineering conferences that began around that time.
A Michigan company that displays instructions for manual manufacturing processes on work stations via augmented reality (AR) is adding wearables to provide similar guidance.
Structured light systems measure surfaces by projecting a pattern of fringes, then using cameras and sophisticated software to convert them into point clouds of metrology data. Accuracy can reach the single-digit microns over millions of points.
Most anyone who’s worked in a machine shop for any length of time has at some point attended a trade show or machine tool distributor’s open house. There they see canned demonstrations of CNC machines busily carving up chunks of brass, mild steel, or aluminum into business card holders and tic-tac-toe games.
Ranked as the top additive manufacturing (AM) platform vendor, Stratasys (Los Angeles) scored highest in the overall category of implementation and topped four of the 12 ranking criteria, announced Oyster Bay, N.Y.-based ABI Research, a market-foresight advisory firm providing strategic guidance on the most compelling transformative technologies.
The growing skills gap is causing trepidation among manufacturers and the lack of millennials building careers within the industry is part of the concern.
One of the key advantages of additive manufacturing is its digital thread, which allows for rapid communication, iteration, and sharing of a design model and its corresponding physical representation. While this enables an efficient design process, the flow of data opens vulnerabilities to cyber-attack.