Energy & Power Generation

Mahr Inc., Providence, R.I., announced that Lara Rapport joined the company as quality manager to support its continued growth and ongoing commitment to excellence.

The week after CemeCon Inc. held a ribbon-cutting Jan. 17 to officially open its new 15,000-sq.-ft. headquarters and CVD diamond coating facility, I spoke with Gary Lake, company president, to discuss the expansion and developments in cutting tool coating technology.

Imagine a beam of light traveling unimpeded for 13.5 billion light years, only to get deflected and distorted just before being captured by a telescope. That is something the builders of the Giant Magellan Telescope are working hard to avoid.

A recent survey has 80 percent of manufacturers and energy companies implementing or developing a digital workplace transformation plan. Only 18 percent are allocating at least a quarter of their budget toward these efforts over the next 12 months, however—and that's the minimum percentage needed to get started, according to Dan Chalk, director of solution engineering for NTT Data Services, Plano, Texas.

For today's industrial manufacturing applications, it's all about output. The goal is to machine as many parts as possible in the shortest amount of time to maximize profitability. In industries that regularly take huge blocks of metal and machine them down to a part that's approximately 10 to 20 percent of the size and weight of the original piece, that process generates high volumes of metal chips, shavings, grindings and turnings.

At the BWM Group's engine plant in Steyr (Austria), in a reference project accompanied by the Technical University of Vienna, Ecoclean Monschau has significantly raised the energy efficiency of a flexible EcoCFlex Classic robot cell that had been in service for several years. The system's electric power and water consumption were each cut by around 30 percent.

The boost in productivity that the latest cutting tools provide enables manufacturers to reduce the amount fracking companies pay for parts.

UI LABS and ManpowerGroup have released a workforce analysis that identifies 165 data-centric jobs that will define the future of manufacturing in the United States. Descriptions for jobs such as collaborative robotics specialist, manufacturing cybersecurity strategist and enterprise digital ethicist give a window into the advanced skills and knowledge needed to put new technology into practice and remain globally competitive.

Pressure and flow are two common terms when it comes to air compressor systems, but the relationship between the two is often misunderstood. Choosing the wrong compressor for your facility can lead to the inability to produce products or wasted energy that increases costs.

President Donald Trump has issued an executive order on assessing and strengthening the manufacturing and defense industrial base and supply chain resiliency of the United States. He said strategic support for a vibrant domestic manufacturing sector, a vibrant defense industrial base and resilient supply chains is a significant national priority.

Peak oil demand is in the news. In a May Wall Street Journal article, for instance, authors Lynn Cook and Elena Cherney stated, "The world's largest oil companies are girding for the biggest shift in energy consumption since the Industrial Revolution: After decades of growth, global demand for oil is poised to peak and fall in the coming years."

The worldwide installed base of Internet of Things (IoT) endpoints is expected to grow from 14.9 billion at the end of 2016 to more than 82 billion in 2025. However, a study conducted by Cisco shows that 60 percent of IoT initiatives stall at the Proof of Concept stage and only 26 percent of companies have had an IoT initiative that they considered a complete success.