A new report urges the United States invest in emerging manufacturing technologies, saying the private sector can’t preserve US manufacturing by itself. “Market forces alone are unlikely to achieve the needed change,” according to report by a group called MForesight. &ld

Automotive engineering has never had so much complexity to address. Producing millions of vehicles per year is a daunting feat. This complexity grows exponentially with the introduction of next-generation intelligent features and functions for enabling autonomous driving. Manufacturers are fac

Automotive is one of the most highly-automated industries in the world, and it has been a leading force in expanding the use of industrial automation for decades. In fact, the first industrial robot in production was a Unimation UNIMATE that GM installed on a die-casting line in New Jersey in

ARIS Technology says it’s improving 3D Scanning While 3D scanning has already been adopted by many automotive part manufacturers, the use cases in Quality Control (QC) have been limited. This is primarily due to the following limitations: 1. 3D scanning has been manual. 2. Existing &l

Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (Pittsburgh, PA) announced the awardees of its first round of project funding to strengthen US manufacturing. Separate from its first official project call, these projects were selected upon ARM’s inception to generate timely impact on the nationa

Successful manufacturing companies and distributors know the importance of a good ERP system. Without it, shipments suffer and profits fall. Part of keeping the ERP wheels greased, however, is staying current on software technology, as well as networking with industry peers. This was the in

The Industrial Internet of Things is enabling advanced manufacturing There are plenty of manufacturing catchphrases: the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Industry 4.0 and the Digital Factory. “Sometimes it’s a lot of buzzwords. Sometimes there’s a lot of reality behin

There is no better way to resolve a problem than by eliminating it entirely. At least that’s how KTH Parts Industries Inc. (St. Paris, OH) regarded its decision to automate a manual equipment changeover process for its robotic welding cells. KTH selected GA2 utility couplers from ATI

DMG Mori (Hoffman Estates, IL) delivers manufacturing technologies to aerospace OEMs and production shops supported by a package of CAD/CAM/CNC hardware, software, and engineering services from Siemens Industry Inc. (Elk Grove Village, IL) for  aerospace machining. A long-time partner

Manufacturing Engineering: Tell us a little bit about your background and how you’ve been involved in manufacturing. Diego Tamburini: Certainly! This is actually my third tour with Microsoft, which I started in November of last year. I currently work as the principal industry lead for Az

Intelligent factories have existed since manufacturing’s historical inception, but intelligence—defined as the acquisition and application of manufacturing knowledge—resided only with the factory’s staff. With the advent of numerical control (NC) and then computer numer

Lots of shops say they want to automate operations, but how many actually have? An article in the August 2017 issue of Manufacturing Engineering on linear pallet systems quoted an industry expert saying every shop he visits wants to automate. Yet Errol Burrell, product specialist for Okuma

When wrestling with vexing issues such as product complexity, lightweighting, advanced materials and new manufacturing methods, today’s manufacturing engineers increasingly use high-fidelity simulations to visualize solutions to these challenges. The latest simulation software can offer

Smart wearable tools are setting the tone with Industry4.0 for Italy’s auto factories of the future in today’s Maserati plants. Developing and using technology within today’s Smart Factories is providing a level of intra-connectivity that is changing the very framework of mod

My instincts tell me we need a sense of urgency around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in manufacturing. The urgency is driven by how quickly technology can move today, and how an unexpected breakthrough can quickly dominate. AI is used in facial recognition, converting speech to writt

Manufacturing Engineering: The latest PowerMill 2019 update from Autodesk adds a new additive plug-in module. Can you describe this “high-rate” additive manufacturing system and how it works? Clinton Perry: PowerMill 2019 provides a dedicated suite of tools to program high-rate

As OEMs and suppliers alike wrestle to convert Big Data to Smart Data, Industry 4.0 and digitalization, plus cloud-based technologies for production monitoring and management, how do manufacturers best work together with end-users to achieve today’s production targets and plan future fac

The next “dynamic duo” may not involve humans at all. “Machine vision and robots make for a perfect marriage,” stated Klas Bengtsson, global product manager, vision systems for ABB Robotics (Auburn Hills, MI). This is not new. Vision and robotics have gone hand in hand

A key success factor for Industry 4.0 and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) initiatives is the emergence of more and better sensors in machining centers, and even in the cutting tools themselves. These sensors provide the data and connectivity that are the foundation for the “factory

New releases add cloud versions, simulation, augmented reality/virtual reality, and additive offerings, while looking to manufacturing’s IIoT future Complexity is pervasive in today’s component design and manufacturing processes. In the latest product lifecycle management (PLM) sof