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2017 or earlier clear Software clear Lasers clear Additive Manufacturing & 3D Printing clear Tooling & Workholding clear Assembly & Joining clear Plant Engineering & Maintenance clear

Metrology Gets Connected

“Metrology and its relationship to manufacturing is rapidly evolving,” Ken Woodbine, president, Wilcox Associates, a brand of Hexagon Metrology (North Kingstown, RI), recently observed. “We are seeing larger quantities and faster speeds of measurement data collection. The next challenge is what to do with all that data.”

Micro Manufacturing Keeps Shrinking the Envelope

Micro components continue to shrink in size, demanding ever-greater precision and improved handling of parts with sub-micron-sized features. New approaches in micro machining technology include higher-precision systems from traditional micro machining developers, as well as techniques using additive manufacturing processes and semiconductor wafer-scale technology on the smallest of micro parts.

Metal Parts Follow Tough Plastics Act

When you walk into the Redeye On Demand facility in Eden Prairie, MN, you enter into one version of the factory of the future. There you will see a bank of 100 high-end Fortus fused-deposition modeling (FDM) machines from Stratasys that provide the capacity to build real, functional parts with production-grade thermoplastics directly from CAD data.

Tooling and Workholding

Overall, there are two overriding customer needs: reducing cycle time and machine downtime. They want higher feed rates and depth of cut for greater metal removal.

Technology Tailored to Shop’s Machining Needs

You don’t have to look too far to find tooling presetters that fit the machining requirements of just about any size shop. The value of off-line tool presetting—rather than stopping machine spindles to touch off tools as machines sit idle—continues to prove itself invaluable, especially to the smallest first-time user shops.

Additive Manufacturing: A Global Perspective

Stefan Ritt, vice president, Global Marketing and Communications (Lübeck, Germany; Wixom, MI), is a recognized leader and expert in AM metals business and applications. He has seen current metal additive manufacturing (AM) applications and developments giving him a unique perspective on this market and where it is going.