Today’s products require high finishes, burr-free edges, freedom from contamination, and often close tolerances. Electropolishing provides all of those conditions and more in a matter of seconds for many metal parts. It is a process that has been used for more than a hundred years. It is widely known and the science is widely discussed, but its ability to run job shop lots and high-precision high-volume parts in the same equipment makes it a bit unique.
When you walk into the Redeye On Demand facility in Eden Prairie, MN, you enter into one version of the factory of the future. There you will see a bank of 100 high-end Fortus fused-deposition modeling (FDM) machines from Stratasys that provide the capacity to build real, functional parts with production-grade thermoplastics directly from CAD data.
All fixtures are designed to hold a workpiece in position firmly and accurately during a manufacturing process.
Methods Machine Tools Inc. (Sudbury, MA), a leading supplier of precision machine tools, 3D printing technology and automation, recently introduced an automation cell designed to greatly boost 3D manufacturing throughput.
Airbus has achieved a 3D printing first with the installation of a 3D printed titanium bracket on a series production commercial aircraft. Manufactured by Arconic, a global technology, engineering, and advanced manufacturing company, the 3D printed titanium bracket was installed on a series production Airbus commercial aircraft, the A350 XWB.
LUBECK, GERMANY, June 19, 2017 – SLM Solutions Group AG, a leading supplier of metal-based additive manufacturing technology, signed a long-term cooperation agreement with BeamIT S.p.a., which is based in Fornovo di Taro, Italy. The cooperation concerns the joint development and testing of various parameters for setting the machines when using various metal powders.
The classic manufacturing conundrum is how to make products quicker, cheaper, and better.
With thousands of fastener locations that need to be drilled and filled to complete a plane, drilling and fastening remain the largest areas of opportunity for automated robotics applications in aerospace. New developments are also making robots more attractive than ever in the aerospace and defense space—especially improved rigidity and accuracy in the robots themselves.
Automation development in the aerospace industry has quickened its pace, with the aviation and defense industries attempting to further automate manufacturing processes to meet growing OEM order backlogs and critical aerospace-defense program deadlines.
Micro components continue to shrink in size, demanding ever-greater precision and improved handling of parts with sub-micron-sized features. New approaches in micro machining technology include higher-precision systems from traditional micro machining developers, as well as techniques using additive manufacturing processes and semiconductor wafer-scale technology on the smallest of micro parts.