Industry News

News • December 19, 2016 • Alan Richter

MITGI Finalist for 2017 Community Impact Awards

MITGI has been honored as a finalist for a 2017 Community Impact Award from Minnesota Business magazine in the Youth Initiative category. This award category recognizes companies for creating or supporting programs designed to enable youth to develop abilities in areas such as leadership, social responsibility, skilled trades, education and community involvement.

News • December 19, 2016 • Michael C. Anderson

$1.5 million Cloud-based Machine Monitoring Research Project to Begin

Penn State reports that it will team with researchers and analysts from Case Western Reserve University, the GE Global Research Center and Microsoft on a $1.5 million collaborative research project to develop a cloud-based wireless sensing and prognostic system for monitoring manufacturing machinery. The initiative will make it possible for such a system to detect early signs of wear, aging and fault conditions in the machines.

News • December 16, 2016 • Dennis Spaeth

Washington Post: U.S. manufacturers need help

The Wonkblog, a regular business feature on The Washington Post website, tackled the need for skilled labor among U.S. manufacturers in its Dec. 15 post. The news item features the plight of the Mursix Corp., an Indiana company that produces seatbelt buckles and bed frames, and has had trouble finding skilled workers to help keep up with the company's growth. It's a story that's been repeated throughout the news media on a fairly regular basis for the past couple of years. What caught my eye with this particular article, however, was a comment from Michael Hicks, a business professor at Ball State University in Muncie, which is where Mursix is located.

News • December 14, 2016 • Dennis Spaeth

Unemployed retrained for high-tech manufacturing jobs

A group of long-term unemployed men last week received high-tech manufacturing training certificates from the Central Massachusetts Workforce Investment Board and MACWIC (Manufacturing Advancement Center Workforce Innovation Collaborative) at the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MassMEP) in Worcester, Mass.

News • December 13, 2016 • Michael C. Anderson

Apollo 15 Drill Chuck Used on the Moon: Sold!

Buy a used drill chuck, which didn't work flawlessly to begin with, for almost $50,000? Sounds like a bid for lunacy. And it is, literally. Auction house RR Auction recently took bids on the chuck that was part of the lunar-surface drill used on the Apollo 15 mission by Commander Dave Scott in 1971.

News • December 13, 2016 • Michael C. Anderson

Ames Laboratory Takes a Powder

Ames Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been awarded $5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) to improve the production and composition of metal alloy powders used in additive manufacturing.

News • December 7, 2016 • Dennis Spaeth

Vo-tech students help service dog play fetch

Students at the Middlesex County Vocational and Technical Schools in East Brunswick, N.J., recently earned some media attention for making a device that enables a disabled man to toss a ball from his wheelchair and play fetch with his service dog.

News • December 7, 2016 • Kip Hanson

Laser cladding head for hybrid machines

Attendees at the IMTS 2016 trade show may have noticed a number of magnetic "hybrid" signs affixed to several brands of machine tools. The man largely responsible for the signs being displayed is Jason Jones, inventor of the AMBIT laser cladding head and co-founder of Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies Inc., Plano, Texas.

News • December 7, 2016 • Michael C. Anderson

Giant robot being built for combat

After robot builder MegaBots Inc. determined that its Mk. II robot was unsafe for the two human pilots to operate during the upcoming Giant Robot Duel against Japan-based Suidobashi Heavy Industry's Kuratas robot, the Hayward, Calif.-based company decided to build a new robot from scratch.

News • December 7, 2016 • Michael C. Anderson

ROBONANO comes to America

For 10 years, FANUC Corp.'s highly accurate ROBONANO automated milling machines have been in use in Japan's semiconductor industry. Now the newest iteration of the machine is in the U.S. to help researchers studying emerging materials and manufacturing processes.

News • December 7, 2016 • Evan Jones Thorne

A one-stop robot shop

As useful and commonplace as robots are in manufacturing, buying one is rarely a one-stop shopping experience. However, robot manufacturer Universal Robots A/S has launched a new service, UR+, which may change the way robots are bought and sold.

News • December 7, 2016 • Michael C. Anderson

Challenges in Digitizing Manufacturing via ERP Systems

A look at "how manufacturers make the most of machine data" in CIO magazine goes over the challenges as well as the benefits of using ERP. A major source for the article is Magnus Wiktorsson, professor of production systems at Mälardalen University in Sweden. Wiktorsson outlines four key challenges for companies looking to digitize their manufacturing processes, which are worth reading.