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.
Applications and new players are on the rise, but challenges remain—including financial concerns.
NASA's John Vickers describes how advanced manufacturing is affecting aerospace.
Additive will provide a simpler, more responsive supply chain for high-value parts, according to Velo3D CEO Benny Buller.
From Copper to Filaments, engineers are developing new materials for 3D printing, advancing its practical use. In February, Markforged, Watertown, Mass., commercialized a pure copper filament for its printers so they can use this hard-to-machine metal.
Fluence Analytics (formerly Advanced Polymer Monitoring Technologies), a manufacturer of smart industrial and laboratory monitoring systems, recently released the third generation of its ACOMP, an automated system that performs continuous, real-time monitoring and characterization of polymers for 3D printing and other uses during manufacturing and post-processing.
Laser micro-cutting can increase precision and enable contactless cutting for machines, leading to higher-quality products.
A professor, who visited IMTS in September, discusses trends in machine tools.
When visiting some machine shops I hear PM, most commonly known as preventive maintenance, referred to as “postmortem,” as in, “We just run the machines until they die.”