Workholding Solutions to Reduce Costs, Increase Throughput April 24, 2018 At the Nirvana Machine Shop on planet Perfection, every workpiece is clamped to a custom-built fixture mounted on a dedicated machine tool. Each workpiece is dimensionally identical to the one before and the one after. All the fixtures are totally automatic—instantly positioning, clamping, machining, inspecting, and releasing the part with the ultimate precision.
Big, Heavy, Awkward Parts Need Workholding, Too April 23, 2018 If you’ve ever seen industrial wind turbine components on the back of a flatbed truck rolling down the highway, you have a good idea of what a large, heavy, difficult-to-handle workpiece is. For example, with a single blade on the GE 1.5 mW turbine being almost as long as a football field, the entire blade assembly weighs about the same as 36 small cars.
Some firms accept arrival of Age of AI, seize the day April 4, 2018 Remember the boy with endless learning capacities in the 2001 film “AI Artificial Intelligence”? He’s quickly coming to life. Today, AI is no longer fictional; it’s reality.
Innovations Enable Faster Beam Delivery, On-the-Fly Welding April 6, 2018 For ABB, robotic welding comes down to a never-ending process of ensuring parts are suitable for laser joining and developing the appropriate processes. To that end, ABB is refining a recent innovation to improve beam delivery speeds and has developed software for on-the-fly welding in tandem with Trumpf’s Intelligent Programmable Focusing Optic (IPFO).
Wanna mitigate cyber risk? Seven precautions to take April 3, 2018 Nearly a year ago, the world became aware of a new computer virus known as WannaCry. Many institutions were affected by the ransomware. It encrypted and locked a Microsoft Windows computing system and demanded payment.
AI Enables Smarter Assembly, Superior Products April 6, 2018 The next cycle of technology disruption is upon us. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking hold in every industry and manufacturing is no exception. AI enables companies—from medical device and electronics manufacturers to pharmaceutical firms—to leverage their Big Data and IoT investments to see new patterns and insights and to perform tasks more efficiently and quickly than ever before.
Smart Manufacturing: Think Big, Start Small April 4, 2018 Smart manufacturing is about making the best decisions in the shortest time possible based on the most accurate real-time data—whether those decisions are made by people, machines or cyber-physical systems.
Vader Systems Announces 3 New Liquid Metal AM Offerings April 27, 2018 At the RAPID + TCT conference here, Vader Systems this week announced three unique offerings based on its patented Magnet-o-Jet technology.
The Basics of Live Tooling April 27, 2018 Live Tooling, as the name implies, is specifically driven by the CNC control and the turret of various spindle and powered sub-spindle configurations on CNC lathes to perform various operations while the workpiece remains in orientation to the main spindle.
DMDII kicks off cybersecurity initiative with seed funding from Pentagon March 12, 2018 The Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) today kicked off a new cybersecurity initiative focused on manufacturing.