Displaying 961-970 of 1329 results for

If “automation” is the constant drone you hear from practically everyone in metalworking these days, job shop owners might be the only people yelling “No!” Or at least “Wait!” How, they ask, can you cost-effectively automate low-volume, high-mix parts? Yet it’s not only doable but probably necessary.

Materials science has opened new possibilities for designers of cars, planes and other products. Metal alloys are now as precisely engineered as they are machined. The result is longer lasting, stronger parts. But with a wider selection of materials comes risk—how can you be sure that one piece of gray metal stock is different than another? Careful warehousing procedures and paperwork only go so far.

After petroleum prices collapsed in the mid-2010s, shale oil and gas producers responded to the down-swing by borrowing techniques and technology from the energy sector’s offshore well operations, manufacturing, and even the medical industry to increase efficiency.

Cofounder Johannes Trabert, who lives a poetic life in the Thuringian Forest, says the future will be focused on ‘the clever share of work’ between humans and robots.

In the manufacturing industry, the importance of metrology, or the science of measurement, is often underestimated. However, inspection is critical for ensuring products work and operate safely.

A conversation between Smart Manufacturing Editor in Chief Brett Brune and Sridhar Kota, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan and Executive Director of MForesight. 

Within manufacturing, a shift has begun to extend big data analytics and condition monitoring beyond the factory door to both ends of the supply chain—to customers, other end users and to second-and third-tier suppliers.

Additive manufacturing (AM) refers to processes used to make a three-dimension object layer-by-layer. The shape of each layer can be dynamically controlled by computer-aided design (CAD).

Powerful trends will push manufacturing close to complete automation by 2050, while the people still working in the industry will be empowered to rapidly innovate like never before.

Artificial intelligence will go long way to imbue data management with trust.