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Formlabs, known for its line of desktop stereolithography (SLA) printers, is looking to expand its 3D printing reach with availability of its new Fuse 1 benchtop industrial selective laser sintering (SLS) 3D printer. Under development for nearly seven years, the Fuse 1 marks a notable change for Formlabs as they expand into a new additive manufacturing process.

Manufacturers are featuring some of the latest equipment and software for metrology, quality assurance, and collecting information for process control.

Manufacturers need to create more production setups as batch sizes get smaller. Skilled labor continues to be hard to hire and keep. Higher levels of automation are needed, not just in material handling but also in fabricating, machining, assembly, and inspection.

More and more manufacturers are seeing productivity as a crucial factor to their business success. In the meantime, business models are changing from the large quantities and few variants to small quantities with frequently changed variants. This change requires high flexibility during production.

There’s nothing mysterious about the need for calibration. As Michael Wilm, business manager for calibration products, Renishaw Inc., West Dundee, Illinois, put it: “When you get gas for your car, you count on the pump being calibrated. That’s why we calibrate machine tools. If you don’t calibrate a machine tool you have no idea it’s going to give you reliable service for manufacturing your product.”

Speeding the flow of jobs through the shop, while maintaining top quality, ranks among the hallmarks of any successful manufacturing operation’s goals.

Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence, a business unit of Hexagon AB, outlined its vision for the future of manufacturing at HxGN Live, the company’s annual digital solutions conference, held June 11-15 in Las Vegas.

The concept of attaching data to CAD models, such as GD&T, seems to be growing. Using model-based definition, the industry is beginning to take advantage of the technique.

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.

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.