General Machining & Manufacturing Processes

Matching your preferred tooling with a cutting application requires hours, if not days, of research into various tooling brands. With MachiningCloud's Tool Advisor, you don't need to sift through traditional catalogs and websites.

SimScale announces the upgrade of its solver for both structural and thermo-structural analyses to bring increased speed and robustness across all FEM-based simulation types available on the cloud-based CAE platform.

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.

For applications that require a high torque, Nanotec offers new planetary gearboxes in two sizes and many reductions: the GP42 gearbox is designed for all motors with NEMA 17-flange, as well as the DF45 external rotor motors from Nanotec. The GP56 gearbox can be combined with all brushless DC and stepper motors in sizes NEMA 23 and 24 (56/60 mm).

Kollmorgen has launched the VLM servomotor series to fill the gap between stepper and high-performance servo motors. The new VLM series synchronous servomotors offer OEMs, machine builders and end users, an excellent price-performance proposition in the torque range of 0.5 to 4.5 Nm continuous and 16 Nm peak, with speeds of up to 6,000 rpm.

Comau is taking a quantum step forward in digital-enabled solutions for lightweight vehicle manufacturing with its new robotic roller hemming process. Fast, flexible and precise, Smart Hemmer is a compact, symmetrical roller hemmer able to hem any complex joint.

In 1880, brothers and colleagues Jacques and Pierre Curie discovered that putting pressure on certain materials created electricity. Taken from the Greek word for "squeeze" (piezein), piezoelectricity was born. Commonly known as the "piezo effect," it also occurs when an electrical field is applied and changes the dimensions of materials. More than 100 years later, PI Ceramic (a division of PI Physik Instrumente) is a leader in the field of piezo ceramic components, including its newest line of mini transducers.

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.

To facilitate company compliance with quality management systems (QMS) organization and documentation requirements, ProShop USA Inc., has started providing QMS consulting assistance to users of its ProShop manufacturing enterprise software. ProShop USA's consulting assistance helps manufacturers take full advantage of the organizational, documentation and access capabilities provided by ProShop software with special attention to a company's specific operations and challenges.

Dorner 2200 Series Conveyors is now a certified UR+ Solution that simplify robot and conveyor integration for a wide variety of automated applications. Easy programming, fast setup, and flexible deployment make the Dorner 2200 series suitable for systems that need an infeed and discharge to a Universal Robot.

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.