In a perfect CNC world, the first part is always a good one. There’s no need for extra blanks or barstock. Setup times are only as long as is needed to swap out a few tools and load a new program. There’s never a crash, never the need to reprogram an inefficient bit of code. The operator just pushes the green button and out pops a finished workpiece minutes or hours later.
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.
Constant refinement of medical machining from tooling design to finished product requires not only the ability to handle a broad range of plastic and metal materials but also to achieve predictable results—particularly in the face of strict regulations.
Flexibility has come to automation, perhaps as never before. And for industries that require precision machining, assembly, and measurement, automation technologies have never been more available.
Automotive engineering has never had so much complexity to address. Producing millions of vehicles per year is a daunting feat.
US manufacturers are discovering the policies of the Trump administration aren’t like a cafeteria. You don’t get choose which policies you want.
When the Italian company JDeal-Form (Oleggio, Italy) started using additive manufacturing to apply a micronized polymer coating to the underwire tips and bra straps it sold to brassiere makers, CTO Davide Ardizzoia grew frustrated with his AM vendor’s constant lateness.
Ongoing exchange between CAD/CAM software technology developers and cutting tool manufacturers is an excellent illustration of how technology collaborations can create productivity gains in manufacturing. Several examples involve our company and cutting tool manufacturers.
The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) (Ann Arbor, MI) and Moog Inc. (East Aurora, NY) have signed a contract to perform co-funded work in support of applying Moog’s VeriPart solution, adapting blockchain technology for additive manufacturing.
Aerospace and defense manufacturing is known for its complex designs, continual changes and the need to negotiate tight margin requirements. At Elite Aviation Products (EAP), a division of Elite Aerospace Group (Irvine, CA), we face these challenges every day.