Industry News

For the second time in its North American Headquarters, Zoller Inc. is hosting an Open House and Technology Days Event May 8-9.

A Ph.D. candidate from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, has been awarded a $15,000 prize for developing a 3D-printed steel tool capable of cutting titanium alloys as well as—if not better than—traditionally manufactured steel tools. The achievement marks a first and could pave the way for increased applications of 3D printing in tool production.

At many facilities, when there's a problem on the factory floor, the high-value, highly salaried engineers spend their time collecting data from different machines and systems, exporting it to spreadsheets and wrangling with it to find a solution. This process of data collection and analysis can take from days to weeks—and sometimes longer. There are two ways to transform this process: the traditional way and the intelligent way.

North American sales of machine vision components and systems that provide vision intelligence to robots and other machines reached $2.874 billion in 2018, an increase of 9.2 percent over 2017 and a new record for the market. According to statistics from the AIA, the industry trade group and part of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), application-specific machine vision (ASMV) systems led the growth with $1.998 billion in sales in 2018, an increase of 7.8 percent over 2017, followed by smart cameras with $466 million, an increase of 14.2 percent.

Precision Micro announces that Karl Hollis, previously technical sales manager, will be appointed to director of engineering as of April 1, 2019.

Join Haimer USA LLC at its North American headquarters for an exclusive first look at the latest Haimer technologies. The company will introduce new innovations surrounding industry 4.0 – with products that enable enhanced data communication and collection.

Wohlers Associates Inc. announced the publication of Wohlers Report 2019, the 24th annual installment of its industry-leading report on additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing. The worldwide study provides the "pulse" of the industry by reporting on growth, development and the future of AM materials, applications, systems, services, design, software, patents, startups, standards, investment and research.

Recently, even astrophysicists have started taking an interest in EMO Hannover. Garching, Germany-based Dr. Theo Steininger and Dr. Maksim Greiner, former PhD students at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, have developed artificial intelligence software that makes use of the latest statistical analysis methods developed for astrophysics. They have successfully deployed the software for door assembly by a German car manufacturer, but are now looking to conquer the metalworking market as well.

According to a new study, sales of high-speed steel (HSS) tools in 2019 are estimated at nearly 218,000 thousand units, projected to register a Y-o-Y growth at 4.8 percent over 2018. HSS tools sales have witnessed sheer proliferation, despite intense competition from solid-carbide tools, as these are best suited for shop production environments, wherein tool cost and versatility are of paramount importance.

Researchers at Linköping University have developed a theoretical model that enables simulations for showing what happens in hard cutting materials as they degrade. The model will enable manufacturing industry to save both time and money.

Building and maintaining a skilled workforce is one of the top challenges manufacturers face today, and the skills gap is only going to increase as older workers look to retire. Companies also might miss out on additional revenue streams because they can't hire or retain employees fast enough to keep pace with increasing demands. The logical thing to do is to focus on operational improvements: Reduce waste, automate processes, and squeeze out even more efficiency. But this goes only so far. What many manufacturers are doing instead of hiring is repurposing existing employees to take on higher-value roles.

If you read the online forums, it is immediately clear that identifying the optimal technique for removing the inevitable burrs created during machining of threaded parts is the subject of much debate.