A fused filament 3D printer has saved a custom outdoor lighting manufacturer tens of thousands of dollars a year, improving operations and winning more business. The purchase also helped retain customers who would previously have gone elsewhere for specialized parts.
If NASA’s Journey to Mars project succeeds, the astronauts who make the 140 million-mile (225 million-km) trip to the Red Planet in the 2030s will need someplace to stay. The space agency is looking at 3D printing, using on-site materials, to manufacture humanity’s first deep space home.
Meeting the needs of the evolving digital manufacturing initiative, Open Mind Technologies (Needham, MA) has recently partnered with Heidenhain TNC controls (Schaumburg, IL) to provide exclusive first use of their new NC code-based machining simulation solution hyperMILL Virtual 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.
As with any digital transformation process, the devil is in the details, and there are many potential pitfalls that can derail projects.
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.
The state of manufacturing is always a combination of tried and true methods; improvements (sometimes dramatic) in traditional processes; and brand new technology few people even conceived of a few years ago.
When designers at Siemens started using virtual reality (VR) to quickly evaluate early-stage ideas, the usually slow and costly design-and-iteration process went from days and hours to minutes.
Until just a few years ago, if a vehicle maker wanted to test the process for making a newly designed composite part at full scale, the company’s R&D engineers would call one of its Tier Ones and ask to schedule a trial run on the composites fabricator’s machines during off hours.
Fostering human-centered innovation by developing powerful, easy-to-use tools is at the heart of the new products, enhancements and services showcased during the Siemens Digital Industries Software 2020 Media & Analyst Conference, a two-day virtual event hosted by the Plano, Texas-based company on June 16 and 17.
