We are all in on this year’s trade show. Do you have your hotel room? Did you get your show ticket? Are you aware of all the companies that are exhibiting? Get on top of your trip to St. Louis today!

August 4 | 1:00 pm
We continue to discuss the paradigm shift in automotive manufacturing. The future is uncertain. In order to have a comprehensive picture, one must include the consumers. Escalent’s EVForward™ is the largest EV study of the next generation of EV buyers. Mike Dovorany and his team talked with 10,000 new vehicle buyers. Come and listen to what they discovered from this research as we work to move forward in this space.

Explore gear grinding processes, machine kinematics and setup, pitfalls, failures and expectations related to finish ground gearing. Learn definitions of gearing component features, process steps from blanking, through heat treatment to finished part ready to ship. Study aspects of quality assurance, inspection documentation and corrective actions for measured non-conformances. Understand pre-heat treat, heat treatment and post heat treatment operations including the how’s and why’s to produce finished gears that conform and perform to end user expectations. 

 

 

Learn and understand fundamentals of gear manufacturing. Acquire knowledge and understanding of gear nomenclature, hobbing and shaping of spur and helical gears, and splines. Learn and understand hobber and shaper machine set-up, as well as gear tooth element inspection. Understand the manufacturing process before gear tooth cutting, as well as post cutting processes. Apply concepts to further finishing processes, I.e. heat treat, gear tooth shaving and grinding and/or skiving. Gain knowledge to establish a solid foundation for all basic gear manufacturing.

Aerospace Manufacturing and Design
Pratt & Whitney has booked more than 800 orders and commitments for geared turbofan GTF engines since the beginning of 2021. Customers that have selected GTF-powered aircraft include Frontier Airlines, Volaris, Air France, Delta Air Lines, and, most recently, AerCap. 

MIT News
A new report, the 2021 State of Supply Chain Sustainability report, puts companies on notice that they ignore the sustainability of their supply chains at their peril. This is particularly the case for enterprises with a low or moderate commitment to SCS, such as organizations classed as “low effort” and “dreamer” in the new SCS Firm Typology that appears in the report for the first time.

Manufacturing Global
COVID-19 has put supply chains through their paces over the last 18 months. An event of this scale — let alone its impact — is hard for anyone to see coming, affecting every single aspect of the supply chain, and bringing unprecedented disruption across the globe. But another crisis of recent months demonstrated that it takes just one element of the supply chain to fail for the whole thing to buckle: the Suez Canal blockage.

Gear Technology
Fine pitch grinding from solid can be particularly problematic, as the typically narrow wheel tip width required to grind these gears makes it very difficult to achieve good balance between tip wear and productivity. To achieve the most efficient fine pitch bevel grinding solutions, Norton | Saint-Gobain Abrasives (Worchester, MA) and Gleason Works (Rochester, NY) teamed up to evaluate, test and implement the latest, best abrasives applications.

Gear Technology
The electric motors used in e-mobility have a significantly higher efficiency compared to conventional combustion engines: Up to 80 percent of the energy stored in the battery is transferred to the wheels as kinetic energy by the highly efficient electric motors by means of a transmission. When burning fossil fuels, the yield of 30 to 40 percent is only about half.

The San Diego Union Tribune
Fabric8Labs, a San Diego startup that’s developing a fundamentally new approach to metal 3D printing, landed $19.3 million in Series A funding led by Intel Capital and existing investors including Mark Cuban. Founded in 2015, Fabric8Labs has developed a non-thermal method for metal 3D printing. The patented process builds complex parts at the atomic level, enabling superior density and surface finish at small sizes. The process also powers high-volume manufacturing of parts using less energy with less waste. The company utilizes low-cost commodity metal salts rather than expensive metal powders.

Bloomberg
Dell's complicated arrangement with VMware has disappointed. But similar financial engineering could work for industrial companies hunting software deals, including Emerson.

 

 

Press release via Yahoo! Finance
Hyperion Metals Limited is pleased to announce the execution of a memorandium of understanding with EOS GmbH, the world's leading solution supplier in the field of industrial 3D printing of metals and plastics. The partnership aims to accelerate the delopyment of Hyperion's HAMR and GSD technologies for the potential production of low cost, low-to-zero carbon titanium metal powders.

Forbes
Most manufacturers are familiar with providing a base services alongside their product offerings. After all, customers expect that equipment will experience maintenance problems from time to time. But with the internet of things (IoT) advances, more manufacturers are looking to move beyond production and add new revenue streams by offering products-as-a-service (PaaS).

IndustryWeek
Despite US manufacturing activity hitting a 37-year-high this spring, half a million factory jobs remain unfilled. The talent gap, which has plagued goods producers for over a decade, continues to hold back not only the industry’s growth, but our entire economy’s: A recent report suggested it cold shortchange GDP by up to $1 trillion by 2030. In Northeast Ohio, it’s estimated that simply filling the 8,000 manufacturing jobs now open would boost the region’s economy by $5 billion annually.

Engine + Powertrain Technology International
GKN Automotive says it is stepping up the development of its next-generation 800V e-drive technologies in response to what it sees a rapidly increasing global demand for electrified vehicles. The company states that its systems are already at advanced stages of development and are now being tested in real-world conditions. The company is also working with various OEMs to make the drives production-ready. It notes that the improved system efficiencies as a result of operating at 800V will lead to increased driving range and could also lead to car makers opting to use smaller batteries, reducing vehicle cost, complexity and weight.

Machine Design
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have developed a one-atom-thick magnet that operates at room temperature. It could lead to new applications in computing and electronics such as high density, compact spintronic memories and new tools for studying quantum physics. 

Gear Solutions
When using the proper design software, manufacturers are able to go from the desired gear to the perfect skiving tool. 

Power Transmission Engineering
Companies look to fuel economy, energy efficiency and operating costs to improve off-highway applications. The big picture in automotive is quickly becoming the big picture in the entire transportation industry. For the off-highway market, this means keeping pace with energy efficiency regulations, changing fuel economy strategies, and reducing operating costs for customers when feasible. Companies like Eaton, BorgWarner, Dana and Thomson Linear continue to provide products and technologies to meet the changing demands of this market.

Engadget
Alphabet has launched another company in its X moonshot factory, and this one may be its most ambitious robotics project to date. The just-opened firm, Intrinsic, plans to make industrial robots more accessible to people and business that couldn’t otherwise justify the effort involved to teach the machines. You could see robotic manufacturing in more countries, for example, or small businesses that can automate production that previously required manual labor.