Shifts in microchip-making to aid automotive, medical
Horizontal machining center technology—a long-time mainstay of OEMs and Tier One contract manufacturers—has morphed into space efficient, versatile machining platforms that any high-mix job shop can benefit from.
Five-axis machining, once a novel and somewhat forbidding technology, has become routine in many shops. Meanwhile, some organizations are still hesitant to use it, largely due to programming concerns.
Low-carbon and medium-carbon steels form the backbone of virtually every shop’s operations in their general engineering applications and fabricated parts.
After three years of work, military researchers are near the end of a project to find a faster, cheaper way to make tools for large aerospace parts like skins for wings and fuselages.
Swiss-style machine tools can be a good choice for making complex parts. On the downside, however, Swiss machining itself has a reputation of being complex—and, therefore, more difficult to master than standard machining.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is set to award $10 million in funding this year to the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) here, UI Labs CEO Caralynn Nowinski Collens, said this morning. UI Labs is DMDII’s parent organization.
For machine shops in a competitive global marketplace, keeping spindles running and making product is the only way to stay in business. Still, adding a new piece of equipment, even with the promise of improving the efficiency of your existing ones, may be a difficult sell to management.
The bane of modern engineering is complexity. One promise of artificial intelligence and machine learning is helping engineers to use complex tools and harness vast data sets effectively.
On June 22-23, SME hosted a Smart Manufacturing Working Group meeting at Texas A&M University (College Station, TX) followed by an international workshop on Smart Manufacturing for the Factory of the Future.
