There have been many process improvement trends in manufacturing over the decades, and none have had more significant ROI than machine monitoring. The increase in machine monitoring is owed in large part to the rise in popularity of the open and royalty-free interconnectivity standard MTConnect.
Today, laser technology in manufacturing touches all of our lives on a daily basis; lasers cut air bag material and weld air bag detonators for our in-car safety; lasers weld the batteries in many of our mobile devices; lasers drill aero-engine components for planes; lasers cut the glass for our smart phones and tablets screens; lasers weld the drivetrains in our cars and trucks; lasers cut medical stents that increase and enhance our lives, just to name a few.
Additive will provide a simpler, more responsive supply chain for high-value parts, according to Velo3D CEO Benny Buller.
The history of cutting tools goes back a ways—a long, long way. Our prehistoric ancestors were pretty good at making stone tools, and the technology has improved from there. I saw how much on a February visit to the Deutsches Museum in Munich, which has an exhibit on the history of machining.
Artificial intelligence will go long way to imbue data management with trust.
A decade removed from the Great Recession, the U.S. job market is thriving. Because employers are struggling to fill empty positions, they must explore other ways to increase production needs.
An engine manufacturer discovers there is a way to reduce 50 billion data points to 2 billion—a reasonable number from which the foundation for machine learning can be built.
Automotive manufacturers and their Tier One suppliers spend endless engineering hours developing the PAB (passenger airbag) system, from the airbag and its propellant to the construction of the materials used in the composite instrument panel.
On May 9, I took a whirlwind tour of change in manufacturing by visiting several open house events. First up was BIG Kaiser Precision Tooling Inc. in Hoffman Estates, IL, where Matt Tegelman, applications manager and product manager Kaiser, talked about the Industrial Internet of Things.
Winthrop Sheldon of SLM Solutions spoke with Editor in Chief Brett Brune at the Aerodef 2017 conference in Texas.
