It’s important to get to the bottom of the hole to know what you’re dealing with.
Schaeffler Technologies AG saw an opportunity to improve manufacturing throughput and reduce the required cell footprint of certain automated tasks.
ARCH Cutting Tools Corp. announced the acquisition of Custom Carbide Cutter Inc.
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.
Mitutoyo America Corp. (MAC; Aurora, IL) celebrated the grand opening of its new Detroit-area M3 Solution Center in Novi, MI, on June 28. The 8455 ft2 (785.5 m2) facility replaces one that the company had occupied for 38 years in nearby Plymouth, MI.
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.
The challenges to manufacturing as it evolves into the 21st century are now familiar, and impact how metrology must contribute. Manufacturers face uncertain production volumes with roller-coaster demand, shorter production runs and faster product development cycles. Automation, while alluring as a way to reduce cost, needs to adjust.
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.
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.
It is reported that, not too long ago, before the current precipitous decline in machine-tool shipments, the number of 30-taper machines that were being manufactured and sold in Japan had surpassed the numbers of 40-taper and 50-taper machining centers.