Manufacturers are facing shrinking product lifecycles with frequently changing customer demands. As a result, they need agile production and flexible factory layouts that can easily be modified whenever needed.
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.
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.
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.
Efficient creepfeed grinding can remove material quickly and produce a precision ground surface on challenging materials. However, since creepfeed grinding applications typically draw more power and have higher forces, there are important considerations to pay attention to during application setup.
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.
Additive manufacturing (AM) once was called “rapid prototyping.” Its earliest forms made prototype parts—and nothing else. However, manufacturers were intrigued by the prospect of using it to make cost-effective metal parts in production. That day is here.
Two new production resins are available for 3D printing: one from 3D Systems is a thermoset that thinks it’s a thermoplastic and another from Carbon is a hybrid that’s 30 percent biomaterial, the company’s first resin with a reduced carbon footprint.
The second level of machining automation is here. It may not be at every shop or factory yet, but it’s coming.
Industrial robots are becoming easier to program, more versatile, more cost-effective, more accurate and more mobile. These changes are lowering barriers to entry, shortening return on investment and making robots a more practical investment.