How Bright is the Future of Automation? April 17, 2020 In the 1955 short story “Autofac,” Philip K. Dick envisioned a world dominated by self-replicating robots that work incessantly, eventually depleting the planet’s resources.
ABB Announces New Programing Wizard For Its Cobots April 8, 2020 Using Blockly to make robots easier to install and operate without specialized training.
Competition Announced to Design Ventilator April 2, 2020 A dozen Boston area anesthesiology residents have launched an eight-week hackathon hosted on GrabCAD.com to design a rapidly deployable, minimum viable mechanical ventilator for patients with COVID-19-related ventilator-dependent lung injury.
Automated Metrology in Manufacturing March 26, 2020 Modern manufacturing is a data-driven endeavor. The sheer volume of data available to be collected and analyzed is staggering—and something that couldn’t have been envisioned even 20 years ago.
Tips for Choosing a CNC March 26, 2020 Like most of the digital architecture of manufacturing, computer numerical controllers (CNCs) have advanced rapidly in recent years, producing far more processing speed and implementing advanced algorithms, while at the same time offering simpler, more intuitive user interfaces.
Hey, Job Shops: Time to Automate! March 25, 2020 Robots and job shops have not typically been talked about together. After all, everyone knows that automation is only suitable for high-volume production, and the typical mom-and-pop operation is anything but—its schedule filled with orders for high-mix, low-volume, and often highly complex work.
The Promise of Next-Level Automation March 24, 2020 Edge. Cloud. Digital twin. AI. AR. VR. Cobots. Once they were buzzwords. Now, they are becoming technical realities in mid- to large-scale manufacturing plants in North America.
America Makes reaches significant milestone March 18, 2020 America Makes, the public-private partnership that the Obama administration set up to foster research and innovation in additive manufacturing, achieved a significant milestone late last year: an online portal to track gaps in additive manufacturing (AM) standards.
Are Cobots Inherently Safe? February 21, 2020 The “Global Robotics Report 2019” found that 79 percent of automation distributors do not believe their customers understand the safety requirements of installing a collaborative robot, or cobot.
Metal Milestones in 3D Printing February 21, 2020 Compared to machining and other traditional metalworking processes, additive manufacturing (AM) is a newcomer. Most industry experts trace its birth to 1987, when Chuck Hull of 3D Systems fame introduced the first commercially available stereolithography machine, the SLA-1.
