NORTHBROOK, IL, Dec. 19, 2017 – UL, a global safety science company, and Tooling U-SME, a leader in manufacturing workforce and education development, announce the signing of a Letter of Intent (LOI) focused on a new collaboration to enhance workforce training and development efforts for manufacturers wanting to increase their capabilities in additive manufacturing.
October US cutting tool consumption totaled $198.00 million according to the U.S. Cutting Tool Institute (USCTI) and AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology. This total, as reported by companies participating in the Cutting Tool Market Report (CTMR) collaboration, was up 13.2 percent from September’s $174.92 million and up 17.2% when compared with the $169.00 million reported for October 2016. With a year-to-date total of $1.835 billion, 2017 is up 8.0% when compared with 2016.
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.
More than 4,600 cutting tools items from M.A. Ford (Davenport, IA) are listed on MachiningCloud (Camarillo, CA), with more to come. M.A. Ford manufactures standard, high performance and custom cutting tools with worldwide manufacturing and distribution facilities. MachiningCloud is a product data provider for cutting tools, CNC machines and workholding.
HP Inc. (Palo Alto, CA) said today it’s introducing an industrial-sized 3D printer and expanding its offering of materials for additive manufacturing.
Lasers — well-established tools in the manufacture of medical devices—are continuing to break ground by producing smaller, more precise and more functional parts thanks to faster pulse speeds at lower cost, new applications and the marriage of laser processing to Swiss-style machining.
Sometimes succession of a family business from one generation to the next doesn’t always go as planned. Take, for example, Laser Specialists Inc. (Fraser, MI). Incorporated in 1986, the company was positioned at the forefront of laser cutting technology.
In the last seven to eight years, solid-state lasers have come to dominate laser welding and cutting,” said Tom Bailey, product specialist for Trumpf Inc. (Farmington, CT). While Trumpf still produces CO2 lasers, for most applications solid-state lasers literally outshine them.
Fabrisonic, Now 6 Years Old, Moves to Develop New Processes, Materials
The manufacturing industry has lost another of its giants, with the news that Dick Morley, considered the “Father of the PLC,” an SME Fellow and former SME board member, passed away on Oct. 17 in New Hampshire at the age of 84.