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.
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.
The well-established field of laser marking continues to break new ground with expanding business opportunities in automotive, oil and gas, medical and other industries.
A Michigan company that displays instructions for manual manufacturing processes on work stations via augmented reality (AR) is adding wearables to provide similar guidance.
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.
Aerospace machining encompasses machines small and large. These range from the Tornos SwissNano to the Makino MAG3, as Rich Sullivan put it. He is the OEM manager for Iscar Metals Inc., Arlington, Texas.
Canadian based 7D Kinematic Metrology Inc., has acquired Nikon Metrology’s iGPS dynamic tracking business. The closing of the transaction is expected to take place on March 31.
Manufacturing got smart when companies figured out how to make products in one market and sell them in another. Today, we call this supply chain logistics. But somewhere along the way, the innovation chain connecting supply (manufacturing) and logistics (the supporting infrastructure) started to diverge.
Kennametal Inc. worked with Anthony Machine Inc. so the latter could reduce setup times.
No one can accuse cutting tool manufacturers of not trying every possible combination of coating, substrate, material and geometry in their quest to gain a competitive edge for their customers.
