There have been many process improvement trends in manufacturing over the decades, and none have had more significant ROI than machine monitoring. The increase in machine monitoring is owed in large part to the rise in popularity of the open and royalty-free interconnectivity standard MTConnect.
Q&A with Chad Stoecker, leader at Managed Services GE Digital, IPRC in Lisle, Illinois.
Automatic parallel parking, lane-keeping assistance, sensor-enabled maintenance, infotainment equipment and other advanced electronics are helping many automotive manufacturers differentiate their vehicles in a fiercely competitive, global marketplace.
Real-time machine tool data collection isn’t just about helping manufacturers improve productivity and profitability, although that’s certainly a promised outcome.
To stay ahead in the game, manufacturers constantly seek an edge over the competition. With today’s CAD/CAM software, the builders of aircraft, automobiles and other complicated systems get the innovative programming tools needed to coax the most performance from complex, expensive machine tools.
Speeding up programming tasks on CAD/CAM software ranks at the top of machine shops’ requirements when faced with making quality parts on a deadline. The more efficient a shop’s toolpaths are, the less chance that any programming problems result in wasting very expensive machine time on the shop floor.
An early pioneer in the fields of NC and CAD/CAM software, Patrick J. Hanratty, PhD, discovered his passion for computing and programming almost by accident, answering a newspaper ad seeking programmers in his hometown of San Diego after returning from service in the Air Force during the Korean War.
3DXpert for Solidworks is a complementary software solution for Solidworks, providing professional users, designers and engineers with a complete toolset to prepare and optimize their designs for additive manufacturing [AM]. This allows companies to be more competitive, expand the types of projects they can design, and enjoy the advantages that AM brings.
You have heard it before, today’s manufactured products are becoming ever more complicated. As computers and microcontrollers get ever cheaper and more powerful they have become more enticing for product engineers to use and incorporate. This means the intellectual property in the embedded software has grown increasingly in value – possibly exponentially.
Q&A with Jon Sobel, co-founder and CEO of Sight Machine located in both San Francisco, CA and Ann Arbor, MI.