Manufacturing Engineering: May 2020
The May 2020 edition of Manufacturing Engineering is available as a digital magazine. Links to individual articles are below.

Industry 4.0 Offers Real Solutions
April 20, 2020
Industry 4.0 often seems like a vague, faraway idea, but there are several practical and relatively easy steps that can be taken to jump into the “future of manufacturing” right now. From addressing skilled labor shortages to increasing machine utilization, a fancy title should not stop a shop owner from using what works.

No Shop Too Small for Industry 4.0
April 21, 2020
The ability to take Industry 4.0 software and implement it into your current server system, connect your machine tools, start collecting data and make it valuable to your business is very easy to do. That is according to Brad Klippstein, supervisor and product specialist at Okuma America Corp., Charlotte, N.C.

How Indexable Tools Keep Their Edge
April 22, 2020
Sales figures don’t lie: indexable cutting tools—featuring removable cutting tips called inserts—are a smash hit with machine shops.

Measurement Accuracy: What You Need to Know
April 23, 2020
It’s an old challenge: You’re a manufacturer whose customer needs you to assure that the part you’ve contracted to make for them will be held to specified tolerances. So, what’s the best method for making sure the part is within spec?
Shop Solutions
-
Lasers
Remote Monitoring Reveals How to Boost Uptime on Laser Machines
April 27, 2020East Iowa Machine Co. (EIMCo) in Farley, Iowa, is a full-service machine and fabrication shop. It is an ISO 9001:2015 certified manufacturing company, employing about 150 people on three shifts at its single 130,000 ft2 (12,077 m3) location, and converts raw metals into finished component parts and assemblies using a wide variety of CNC equipment and state-of-the-art manufacturing processes. -
Machining & Metal Cutting
Shop Helps Revolutionize Oil Disaster Response
April 28, 2020Oil spills are, unfortunately, an unavoidable consequence of pumping, drilling and shipping the commodity around the globe. The most recent large-scale oil spill, the BP Deepwater Horizon incident in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, continues to have detrimental effects on surrounding ecosystems.
Up Front
-
Expert Opinion
Fast Retooling Helps Factories Fight COVID-19
April 20, 2020It wasn’t exactly a sneak attack, but the coronavirus hit the U.S. in March with a force not unlike what happened during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, which prompted the U.S. to enter World War II.
SME Speaks
-
SME Speaks
Blockchain: Great for Manufacturing Supply Chains
April 24, 2020In 1994 I was 11, and my dad brought home a Canon PC with a 486 Intel processor running Windows 3.1. Yes, believe it or not Canon used to make PCs; before that, we had a Tandy 1000 at home.
Research Focus
-
Expert Opinion
Manufacturers Adapt to COVID-19, Remain Optimistic
April 21, 2020To gage the impact COVID-19 will have on the manufacturing industry, SME Media surveyed more than 700 manufacturing professionals to understand how their companies will begin to recover post-COVID-19.
Advanced Manufacturing Now
-
Smart Manufacturing
Acquiring Production Data From Legacy Equipment
April 22, 2020Manufacturers make strategic and operational decisions with digital production data and analytics, including information ranging from part counts and output speeds to machine conditions and alarm status. -
Expert Opinion
Fastener Maker Cuts Energy Usage by 50 Percent
April 23, 2020At BUMAX, we have reduced the energy we use for heating and electricity at our Åshammar, Sweden, facility by more than 50 percent since 2011, significantly reducing carbon emissions and further streamlining the production of our high-strength stainless steel fasteners. -
Tooling & Workholding
Live Tooling: Basic Concepts, Recent Developments
April 24, 2020Live tooling, as the name implies, is driven by the CNC and the turrets of various spindle and powered sub-spindle configurations on CNC lathes.
Software Update
-
Software
Digital Twin Powers Accurate Program Simulation
April 27, 2020What makes a CAM system “good,” in our opinion, is the quality of its post processor and the technical support provided by the vendor. When programming questions are answered quickly and accurately, and the system produces good code, programming is simplified and machine utilization goes up, while both setup and cycle times drop.
Product Previews
-
New Products
May 2020 Product Previews — New Technology for Manufacturers
April 28, 2020New technology for manufacturers in 2020.
Workforce Pipeline
-
Workforce Development
Van Buren Tech Shatters Manufacturing Stereotypes
April 29, 2020It’s easy to tell the quality of an educational institution by the character of its graduates. Van Buren Tech’s Advanced Manufacturing graduates have both the hard and soft skills that make them invaluable employees and ideal continuing students.
Viewpoints
-
Expert Opinion
Revamping On-The-Job Training
April 29, 2020The “complexity gap” is a reality all manufacturers must face as they prepare their workforces for modern manufacturing methodologies. This gap is widening as new and emerging technologies demand more and more varied skills than the average worker can master in the time frame that employers need to compete in our economy.