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Step inside Pride Solutions LLC’s bustling shop floor in Hutchinson, MN, and you’ll see a shiny new CNC lathe turning out tube after tube of aluminum. While Pride’s machinists do more important things, a Universal Robot model UR10 collaborative robot (cobot) does the grunt work, loading and unloading the machine to keep up with high-volume orders.

For CMMs, the good times continue to roll. “One of the surprising things that has happened in just the last three to four years is the sheer volume of CMMs that we are shipping,” said Angus Taylor, president of Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence, North America (North Kingstown, RI). “The market seems to be really exploding.”

Ask almost any CAD/CAM vendor what they’re focused on and they’ll tell you it’s the same today as it was five years ago, and it’ll be the same in five years: Get the part onto the machine as fast as possible and get it off the machine as fast as possible. Here’s the current state of play in those two main areas.

Ask the owner of any machine shop or sheet-metal house to name the biggest obstacle to company growth and you’re likely to receive the same answer—it’s not a lack of working capital that’s slowing them down, nor a shortage of advanced technology, but something far more basic: the need for someone to push a green button or pack boxes. “We can’t find enough people,” you’ll hear.

Smart factory systems benefit from improved technologies, as well as proven applications.

The latest mobile robots are designed to accomplish tasks in manufacturing plants without requiring major factory modifications. This emerging robot generation also meets workers where they are, functioning more like independent team members as opposed to complicated, difficult-to-use hardware.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) is keen on exploring the implementation of additive equipment in the battlefield and shipboard for quick-turn part fabrication.

Just getting familiar with the digital thread? You’ve come to the right place to learn what it is and why you need it for your products.

Automotive manufacturers and their Tier One suppliers spend endless engineering hours developing the PAB (passenger airbag) system, from the airbag and its propellant to the construction of the materials used in the composite instrument panel.

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: