General Electric’s train engine division will tie up with railroad equipment maker Wabtec in a deal worth about $11 billion as GE CEO John Flannery continues to break off parts of the conglomerate. Wabtec CEO Raymond Betler will lead the combined company. 

A video showing a plastic gear with dimension 1200mm was posted to YouTube this week (10min).

The Federal Reserve reported that manufacturing production rose 0.5 percent in April, bouncing back from being unchanged in March. Overall, the data continue to show healthy growth for manufacturers. Along those lines, the manufacturing production index has risen from 102.2 in April 2017 to 104.1 in the latest data.

Industrial giant Emerson is buying Aventics, a German pneumatics technology company, for $621 million. Aventics is among global leaders in smart pneumatics technologies that power machine and factory automation applications. Emerson has a dominant position in fluid automation technologies for process and industrial applications, and Aventics significantly expands the company’s reach in this growing $13 billion market.

Seeking an overview of a process so critical to the gear manufacturing industry, Gear Solutions reached out to a longtime expert on gear grinding technology.

Explore gear failure analysis in this hands‐on seminar where students not only see slides of failed gears but can hold and examine those same field samples close up. Experience the use of microscope and take your own contact pattern from field samples.  

Deciding to invest in a new IT solution is a huge decision for any business, especially when that solution will change the way processes are carried out across the entire organization. But knowing the ROI is worth it can help make enacting that change easier and get stakeholders on board, especially during the pitch and budgeting process.

At the Rapid TCT show, additive manufacturing systems were on display, and booth-by-booth, we heard the rationale for serial 3D printing production, i.e., manufacturing.

General Motors is looking at the possibility of 3D printing components for production vehicles, an endorsement of a technology often considered too slow for mass production environments. Working with software company Autodesk, officials with the automaker are studying ways to cut vehicle weight by using additive manufacturing’s (AM’s) geometric freedom.

Back around 2005-2010, the most exciting things that were happening in broaching had little to do with broaching. The emergence of on-the-edge CNC, software and servo drive technology, practically transformed a metalworking process as old as water into a viable, alternative consideration for producing high-volume part runs.

The first planned assembly, test and launch operations (ATLO) activities of the Mars 2020 mission out of NASA will involve electrical integration of flight hardware into the descent stage. The Mars 2020 rover, as well as its cruise stage, aeroshell and descent stage will undergo final assembly at the Spacecraft Assembly Facility High Bay 1 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.

A consortium led by the Youngstown Business Incubators awarded grants totaling nearly $2 million from the state of Ohio’s Advanced Manufacturing Program.

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my career in the world of disruptive technology, it’s beware the hype. Manufacturers know that more automation is key to breaking the deadlock between today’s status quo and the promise of Industry 4.0. 

Learn key factors in the inspection process that lead to better design of gears. Develop a broad understanding of the methods used to manufacture and inspect gears. Discover how the resultant information can be applied and interpreted in the design process.

There are only five wind turbines operating in U.S. waters today. But that will likely soon change, partly because of states with ambitious offshore wind targets. 

Accurate prediction of gear dynamic factors (also known as Kv factors) is necessary to be able to predict the fatigue life of gears. This paper uses a multibody dynamic model, with all 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) of a high-speed gearbox to calculate gear dynamic factors. The findings from this paper will help engineers to understand numerous factors that influence the prediction of dynamic factors and will help them to design more reliable gears.

In the world of gear design, high-quality forgings and advanced steel technologies are critical for enhanced performance. Improvements in steel cleanness and manufacturing are producing better products, and developments in forging technology are resulting in higher quality.

Showing off its latest work at the Offshore Technology Conference and again this week at NIWeek, National Instruments is pursuing advances in virtual reality, machine learning, Time-Sensitive Networking and more.

Thanks to recent innovations in cloud computing and big data storage and analysis, artificial intelligence is making great strides in improving efficiency in manufacturing environments, leading to better performance. AI also provides critical information to help managers make more informed business decisions.