Industry 4.0: When humans and robots go hand in hand
Kristie Thong for Eco-Business: Amid concerns that the rise of industrial robots may soon render humans obsolete, Swiss automation giant ABB’s latest innovation may help shine a new light on what the future will look like when humans and robots can work together as partners. Full Article:
LSIS offers glimpse into smart factory
Lee Min-hyung for Korea Times: LSIS, the nation's top electric equipment maker, aims to apply integrated automation systems into all of its manufacturing facilities as a core strategy to slash operating costs and dominate the nation's energy efficiency market.
The so-called "smart factory" initiative comes amid growing popularity for efficient management systems in the age of the Internet of Things (IoT). Global equipment manufacturers are jumping on the "smart" bandwagon for management efficiency, but only a few companies here have achieved significant feats on the area.
LSIS's manufacturing facility, however, offers a glimpse of what automated factory is all about, ranging from assembling parts to packaging.
In particular, the company's G production line is equipped with fully-automated production system operated by its programmable logic controller (PLC).
The PLC is interconnected with the manufacturing execution system (MES), serving as a network hub to manage every level of manufacturing processes within the factory. Cont'd...
U.S. manufacturing isn't dead; factories are running at close to a record pace
Rex Nutting for MarketWatch: U.S. manufacturing sector doesn’t get any respect.
Ask a random sample of people on the street and you’re likely to hear that America doesn’t make anything anymore, that China, Mexico and Vietnam took all of our factories, and that the only jobs left in America are flipping burgers and cleaning hotel rooms.
“Throughout history, at the center of any thriving country has been a thriving manufacturing sector,” says presidential candidate Donald Trump. “But under decades of failed leadership, the United States has gone from being the globe’s manufacturing powerhouse — the envy of the world — through a rapid deindustrialization.” Cont'd.. .
Greycork Challenges Ikea With A Flat-pack Living Room In A Box
From Dezeen: Rhode Island furniture company Greycork has created a collection of quick-assembly, flat-pack pieces that are intended "to be a better alternative to Ikea"...
...Each piece is shipped for free in a thin, flat box and is designed to be assembled by the customer in under four minutes...
...The company's first line, the Brooks Collection, featured a folding dining table, coffee table and bench – all made of wood and priced from $500 to $950... ( full story ) ( Greycork site )
Unique Hybrid Cnc Tool Solution Uses Beckhoff Controls To Integrate Additive Manufacturing With Standard CNC Machining
Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies has developed a unique CNC-based hybrid tool control solution that enables virtually any CNC machine or robotic platform to deploy both metal-cutting and metal-adding heads in the spindle and conveniently change between them.
2016: Six Trends Affecting Safety In The Workplace
Safety is a complex topic, but these six factors are helping to not only increase workplace safety this year but also efficiency, quality and employee well-being.
Will 3D Printing Be the Demise of Plastic Injection Molding?
When it comes to 3D printing versus injection molding, the best production method for your parts will become clear when you can answer these questions regarding your desired quantity, quality and cost.
Nanolights
From Nature.com:
Ultimately, Goh, a PhD candidate at the National University of Singapore, hopes that the method will help her to find blood vessels that are leaking owing to inflammation, perhaps helping to detect malaria or predict strokes. Crucial to her technique are the virus-sized particles that give the solution its colour. Just a few tens of nanometres across, they are among a growing array of 'nanolights' that researchers are tailoring to specific types of fluorescence: the ability to absorb light at one wavelength and re-emit it at another.
Many naturally occurring compounds can do this, from jellyfish proteins to some rare-earth compounds. But nanolights tend to be much more stable, versatile and easier to prepare — which makes them attractive for users in both industry and academia.
The best-established examples are quantum dots: tiny flecks of semiconductor that are prized for their beautiful, crisp colours. Now, however, other types of nanolight are on the rise. Some have a rare ability to absorb lots of low-energy photons and combine the energy into a handful of high-energy photons — a trick that opens up opportunities such as producing multiple colours at once. Others are made from polymers or small organic molecules. These are less toxic than quantum dots and often outshine them — much to the amazement of chemists, who are used to carbon-based compounds simply degrading in the presence of ultraviolet light... ( full article )
4D-Printed Concept Car Will Predict Your Wishes
Viknesh Vijayenthiran for Discovery News: New materials will also play a significant role in the further evolution of the car, according to BMW. This has already started with the increasing use of carbon fiber and other composites instead of conventional steel.
Looking further forward, technologies such as rapid manufacturing and 4-D printing (3D-printed materials that change depending on conditions) will open up new possibilities.
One of the more interesting aspects of the concept is a technology called Alive Geometry which consists of 4D-printed components that can change their shape and interact with the driver. Full Article:
Mobile Robotic Fabrication System for Filament Structures
The project Mobile Robotic Fabrication System for Filament Structures, developed by ITECH graduate Maria Yablonina, demonstrates a new production process for filament structures. It proposes multiple semi-autonomous wall climbing robots to distribute fiber filament, using any horizontal or vertical surface, or even existing architecture, to support the new structures. Compared to larger scale industrial robots that are limited by position and reach, these robots are enabled with movement systems and a collection of sensors that allow them to travel and interact accurately along typical ground, walls, roofs, and ceilings. One can imagine a fabrication process where an operator arrives to the scene with a suitcase housing all the necessary robots and materials to create a large structure. These agile mobile robotic systems move robotic fabrication processes beyond the constraints of the production hall, exposing vast urban and interior environments as potential fabrication sites.
New Materials for Manufacturing: The Economist's Overview For 2015
From The Economist's Technology Quarterly:
This is what some scientists describe as a “golden age” for materials. New, high-performing substances such as exotic alloys and superstrong composites are emerging; “smart” materials can remember their shape, repair themselves or assemble themselves into components. Little structures that change the way something responds to light or sound can be used to turn a material into a “metamaterial” with very different properties...
...When it comes to making chemical bonds, one element, carbon, is in a league of its own; a more or less infinite number of distinct molecules can be made from it. Chemists call these carbon-based molecules organic, and have devoted a whole branch of their subject—inorganic chemistry—to ignoring them. Mr Ceder’s Materials Project sits in that inorganic domain. It has simulated some 60,000 materials, and five years from now should reach 100,000. This will provide what the people working on the project call the “materials genome”: a list of the basic properties—conductivity, hardness, elasticity, ability to absorb other chemicals and so on—of all the compounds anyone might think of. “In ten years someone doing materials design will have all these numbers available to them, and information about how materials will interact,” says Mr Ceder. “Before, none of this really existed. It was all trial and error... ( full article )
Shootout: Fiber Laser Vs Vertical Milling In 3D Deep Engraving
Fonon's Canyon 3D Deep-Engraving System cost is less expensive, deep-engraves at almost 2X the processing speed, requires no consumables and is 100% maintenance-free. There is no workplace or environmental hazards with a superior quality of workmanship when compared to vertical milling machines.
Nobilia uses IoT to create smart factory
Kitchen maker Nobilia has rolled out IoT and automation systems in its German factories to enable real-time tracking of furniture as it progresses through the manufacturing process.
The company, which has distribution in Australia, is using Beckhoff automation technology that is powered by Intel processors.
A barcode that is attached to furniture is encoded with details including processing steps, components required to be added to complete it, and logistics information such as where the finished product is to be delivered.
“Each processing machine scans the barcode and retrieves the associated machining data from a central database. Data connecting the whole factory together makes it possible to produce 2700 kitchens daily,” Intel said in a blog post.
“Through real-time tracking enabled by Intel IoT technologies, Nobilia knows exactly where each part is in the production process at any time.
“If one of the manufacturing lines shuts down, parts are automatically rerouted to another line.”
Riddle of Cement's Structure is Finally Solved
From MIT News:
Concrete is the world’s most widely used construction material, so abundant that its production is one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet answers to some fundamental questions about the microscopic structure and behavior of this ubiquitous material have remained elusive.
Concrete forms through the solidification of a mixture of water, gravel, sand, and cement powder. Is the resulting glue material (known as cement hydrate, CSH) a continuous solid, like metal or stone, or is it an aggregate of small particles...
... Roland Pellenq, a senior research scientist in MIT’s department of civil and environmental engineering, director of the MIT-CNRS lab 2 hosted by the MIT Energy Initiative, and a co-author of the new paper, says the work builds on previous research he conducted with others at the Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) through a collaboration between MIT and the CNRS. “We did the first atomic-scale model” of the structure of concrete, he says, but questions still remained about the larger, mesoscale structure, on scales of a few hundred nanometers. The new work addresses some of those remaining uncertainties, he says. ( full article )
Three Reasons Why Advanced Manufacturing Institutes Matter
American manufacturing is surging with almost 900,000 new jobs created in the past six years. While that's incredible progress, how do we take manufacturing to the next level?
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