More and more manufacturers are seeing productivity as a crucial factor to their business success. In the meantime, business models are changing from the large quantities and few variants to small quantities with frequently changed variants. This change requires high flexibility during production.
The bane of modern engineering is complexity. One promise of artificial intelligence and machine learning is helping engineers to use complex tools and harness vast data sets effectively.
Sometimes, improving the quality of machined parts does not involve machining. That’s what A.R. Machining, a family-owned supplier to the aerospace, gas and semi-conductor industries, discovered.
Simulation in manufacturing is becoming much more pervasive. Advanced visualizations are used everywhere, from machining on shop-floor CNCs to offline CAD/CAM programming of NC equipment.
Most companies do not have a clear strategy for how they are applying IoT, Mark Weatherford, former Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said at an exclusive roundtable Smart Manufacturing convened recently in Chicago.
The technology behind the rise of cryptocurrencies is widely expected to bring ‘a common source of truth’ to manufacturing.
A Michigan company that displays instructions for manual manufacturing processes on work stations via augmented reality (AR) is adding wearables to provide similar guidance.
When a long-time customer came to Northwood Industries, Perrysburg, Ohio, with a challenge to redesign and make a part for one of its commercial paint spray guns, the company was pretty sure they had it covered.
Digital manufacturing solutions with product lifecycle management (PLM) tools hold great potential for manufacturers to eventually fully unlock the promise of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
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.
