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Most manufacturers have relied on third-party vendors to make parts that are then incorporated into the final product. From automakers sourcing stereos and aircraft makers contracting for jet engines to a small bakery ordering plastic bags or a woodshop buying nails, producers of all types have supplemented their internal capabilities through a painstakingly developed supply chain of external vendors.

In manufacturing, the internet is getting quite a bit of attention lately—and for good reason. The Internet is bringing our industry to new frontiers, to the promised land called smart manufacturing.

I just returned from IMTS in Chicago and my first thought was, “where will I be able to rack up all those bonus steps I got last week?” On the easiest day, I walked 7.9 miles, and I topped 10 miles on two other days. It’s easy to understand why.

Additive manufacturing’s (AM) benefits have long been known to the aerospace industry. Industry leaders, like Boeing, Airbus and GE, have led the charge in using the technology for production parts. They’ve figured out how to increase efficiency and enable on-demand production, while saving money, by incorporating AM into their production process.

Increased demand for economically manufacturing challenging aerospace parts faster with higher quality surface finishes is spurring on the development of new bonds and grains for grinding wheels. The latest superabrasives can be an excellent choice for aerospace manufacturers doing production grinding.

For aerospace part production, machine tool volumetric accuracy is vitally important. To define it, machine geometry is a function of moving a certain amount of mass along the way system. This movement of mass needs to move straight without pitch, yaw, and roll, because any variation of these three movements is amplified as you get further and further away from the machine tool’s way system.

Automated industrial vision systems have become a key component of quality conformance inspection for many industrial processes. They are used to detect defects at high rates far exceeding the capability of the human eye in industries ranging from food processing to electronics and automobile manufacturing.

When I graduated with an engineering degree some decades ago, I learned that the organizations I was going to work for had internal communication problems. This was especially true for those that designed and manufactured complex machinery such as engines, aircraft, or automobiles.

AS A TEAM OF FOUR MANUFACTURING engineering undergraduate students from Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA), we had our minds blown within seconds of walking onto the RAPID + TCT show floor when we attended the event, April 23-26, in Fort Worth, TX.

It’s easy to become dazed by the continuing stream of buzz words. For those of us in manufacturing, all this buzz creates a sense of impending change, but no clarity on what that change might be. Uncertainty means anxiety.