Mayo Clinic’s 3D Anatomic Modeling Laboratory is inventing how to use 3D printing for surgical planning and instruction. People undergoing new, uncommon or complex surgeries at Mayo Clinic may benefit from access to the clinic’s expertise in 3D anatomic models. The models the lab builds also helps with patient and medical education.
More shops than ever are embracing waterjet cutting systems. And for the most part, the reason is that a number of customer-driven improvements/innovations to waterjet technology make it even more user friendly, productive and appealing to an ever-broadening array of manufacturers.
Manufacturing Engineering asked thought leaders at five companies for their views on challenges and trends facing the metalworking industry.
Having a plan for maintaining and improving the performance and reliability of every machine on a shop floor is vital to manufacturing operations. Reliable machines make short-notice production runs possible. And the more flexible manufacturers are, the more new customers they’ll attract.
In the early days at CNC Software, we saw that our Mastercam CAD/CAM system was only part of a larger manufacturing solution and that an open architecture foundation could allow seamless data communication with complementary devices and systems across the shop floor.
An Eaton executive describes the automotive supplier's plans to utilize Industry 4.0.
Using 3D printing, or additive manufacturing (AM), in health care is on the rise, with the market expected to be worth nearly $26 billion by 2022. This growth goes well beyond just prototyping, as AM is already used throughout the industry to solve problems and improve care.
Formlabs was founded by MIT researchers in 2011, when high-quality 3D printing was inaccessible for most. We’ve now shipped over 50,000 machines while cementing our mission to “expand access to digital fabrication, so anyone can make anything.”
Shops today must track or measure their manufacturing operations to improve them. This need drives the growing use of MTConnect—an open, royalty-free protocol for extracting data from practically any piece of equipment, including machine tools and other manufacturing systems. The integration of MTConnect is a major undertaking, and can be a bit challenging unless certain preparations are made ahead of time.
Tool presetting machines are a wise investment for machine shops that want to increase their machine utilization. Idle machine tools are often indicators of inefficient machining operations, and stopping a machine tool for any reason is synonymous to losing profits.
