Additive manufacturing (AM) in medicine continues to grow each year. It is a remarkable enabler, but the industry is fraught with barriers to adoption, slow for the sake of patient safety.
With today’s focus on lightweighting, hollow parts made from composite materials, such as ducting, fuel tanks, mandrels, and rocket shrouds, are in higher demand than ever before. The composite ducting market in the aerospace and defense sector alone is expected to reach $864.7 million by 2024, according to a recent report from Stratview Research.
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 I graduated with an engineering degree some decades ago, I learned that the organizations I was going to work for had internal communication problems. This was especially true for those that designed and manufactured complex machinery such as engines, aircraft, or automobiles.
SME’s Smart Manufacturing Hub will be part of IMTS this year. Smart Manufacturing asked past Hub speakers to imagine what manufacturing will look like in 2030. Here are their visions:
In the near absence of academic programs to teach undergraduate engineering students additive manufacturing, a California-based startup has stepped in to help fill the void through internships.
New systems, software and processes are replacing so-called islands of automation with seamless, automated manufacturing lines that boost overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) from 30 to 80% or more.
When the new ISO 9001:2015 certification standard was announced in late 2015, it made waves in manufacturing due to its heavy emphasis on risk management. In our experience, in helping companies become ISO 9001:2015 certified, we’ve seen first hand how the value of embracing a risk-averse culture and the other core aspects of ISO 9001:2015 extends to all aspects of operations.
Additive manufacturing lets companies think “outside the box.” Engineers can now start to look at a part without restrictions on size, shape or material. Instead of taking 15 different CNC milled parts and brazing them together, these companies have reimagined the part entirely—to be built as one part.
We no longer need to accept that it takes a decade to create and make a safe and effective vaccine—thanks in part to smart manufacturing.