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2018 or earlier clear Additive Manufacturing & 3D Printing clear Quality/Inspection/Test clear Machining & Metal Cutting clear Controls clear Materials clear

Optimizing Component Designs with New Additive Manufacturing Tools

3DXpert for Solidworks is a complementary software solution for Solidworks, providing professional users, designers and engineers with a complete toolset to prepare and optimize their designs for additive manufacturing [AM]. This allows companies to be more competitive, expand the types of projects they can design, and enjoy the advantages that AM brings.

Digital Tool Management: Multiple Concepts Begin to Converge

The focus on digitalization in design and machining has highlighted the importance and advantages of more sophisticated digital tool management (DTM) systems. While this has generated a great degree of differentiation, and some confusion regarding a generally accepted system definition, it has resulted in the evolution of objectives and capabilities that are both more comprehensive and more customer-centric.

Sense and Sensibilities: The Evolution of Automation

The latest trends in automation are wide-ranging. They include the integration of the cloud, Big Data and the Internet of Things; protecting the software that runs a plant from hackers; manufacturing execution system (MES) apps that can be deployed a la carte; collaborative cobots that can safely do the heavy lifting side-by-side with humans; and robots that can do more than ever before—both on the production line and well away from it.

Real-Time Mobile Messaging Keeps Factory Floors Humming

Launched in November 2016 at FABTECH, Squeaks is a mobile-first Industrial Internet of Things [IIoT] messaging app that facilitates quicker, better decision-making and closed-loop collaboration, with machines as part of the conversation.

A New Approach to PLM?

You have heard it before, today’s manufactured products are becoming ever more complicated. As computers and microcontrollers get ever cheaper and more powerful they have become more enticing for product engineers to use and incorporate. This means the intellectual property in the embedded software has grown increasingly in value – possibly exponentially.

Leveraging Digital Analysis for the IIoT, Big Data

Jon Sobel, CEO and Co-Founder of Sight Machine Inc. in San Francisco, sat down with Senior Editor Patrick Waurzyniak to discuss numerous topics related to Controls and Software, including how Sight Macine Inc. uses analytics software to help shops leverage plant-floor data.

Locking Down the Factory Floor

With more factory assets getting connected to the Web, particularly with the coming explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, today’s manufacturing management must look for rock-solid technologies for securing their factory-floor machinery and the mission-critical intellectual property assets that now often reside in cloud-based software.

Masters of Manufacturing: Herbert B. Voelcker

A self-described “river rat” during his teenage years, Herbert B. Voelcker grew up in the small town of Tonawanda, NY, just north of Buffalo, where as a young man he grew to love the water, boats, and steam engines. His early fascination with how things worked eventually led him to study mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA), and to embark later on a greatly varied technical career highlighted by his research into the mathematical foundations for 3-D solid modeling.

Just What the Doctor Ordered for Business Expansion

When making over-the-counter and prescription soft-gel products, the dosage that fills each gel cap must be precise. It follows, then, that the system for metering the amount of formulation demands the same exacting level of precision. Such is the requirement at leading contract manufacturers of nutritional and pharmaceutical soft-gel products. To keep their metering pumps and production equipment accurate and reliable, they look to Progressive Tool & Manufacturing Inc. (Greensboro, NC).

Real Thinking About Artificial Intelligence

My instincts tell me we need a sense of urgency around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in manufacturing. The urgency is driven by how quickly technology can move today, and how an unexpected breakthrough can quickly dominate.