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.
Modern manufacturing is rapidly adopting model-based definition (MBD). When employing an MBD strategy, the CAD model becomes more than the nominal to which all parts are measured and inspected against. MBD keeps the all-important digital thread intact—from design to manufacturing to inspection and quality reporting.
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.
If NASA’s Journey to Mars project succeeds, the astronauts who make the 140 million-mile (225 million-km) trip to the Red Planet in the 2030s will need someplace to stay. The space agency is looking at 3D printing, using on-site materials, to manufacture humanity’s first deep space home.
When Desktop Metal introduced its “office-friendly” Studio metal prototype printer earlier this year, the company renewed attention on the issue of safer materials for binder jetting, an additive manufacturing method.
To get to smart manufacturing, the industry needs integration, simulation and analysis.
Are you ready for metamorphic manufacturing, what some call the third wave of the industry’s digitization? If not, take in Contributing Editor Karen Haywood Queen’s expertly reported story.
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.”
The industry’s fastest growing firms are leveraging new artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to transform supply chains, transport and logistics. Reliance on paper forms and clashing systems are giving way to improved transparency across the value chain.
Because its president saw opportunities to improve efficiency and an immediate need to make up for capacity lost due to impending worker retirements, Daiwa Steel Tube is set to save more than $1 million a year.