Webinar
Mike Dovorany, VP, Automotive & Mobility at Escalent will discuss the paradigm shift in automotive manufacturing. The future is uncertain. In order to have a comprehensive picture one must include the consumer. 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 set-up, pitfalls, failures and expectations related to finish ground gearing. Learn definitions of gearing components 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 treatment and post-heat treatment operations including the hows and whys 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.

ISM press release
Economic activity in the manufacturing sector grew in July, with the overall economy notching a 14th consecutive month of growth, say the nation’s supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM Report on Business. The July Manufacturing PMI registered 59.5 percent, a decrease of 1.1 percentage points 14th month in a row after contraction in April 2020.

Bloomberg
ISM Manufacturing Business Committee Chairman Timothy Fiore calls the ISM’s July manufacturing report “fantastic” and says it bodes well for the future of the U.S. economy. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Guy Johnson and Alix Steel on “Bloomberg Markets.”

Green Car Congress
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a $42.3-million funding opportunity to support manufacturing innovations for high performance clean energy technologies to drive economy-wide reductions in carbon emissions including: Manufacturing Process Innovation; Advanced Materials Manufacturing; and Energy Systems. One topic that may be of particular interest to the gear industry is 1b: Advanced Tooling for lightweight automotive components.

Automotive World
In the fight against cyber crime, plant managers must make use of all available technology to protect vulnerable assets.

IndustryWeek
One of the most profound effects of the pandemic is that companies are now looking at their workforce from a much larger—human—perspective. Work-life balance became central to determining how employees were able to do their jobs. And for women especially, this became more difficult as balancing the needs of children no longer in school with work was at times impossible. In fact, increased household responsibilities during the pandemic forced many working women to not only scale back on hours but to leave the workforce entirely. According to the National Law Center, more than 2.3 million women have left the labor market since the beginning of the pandemic. Of those working, 25 percent are considering leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers due to the impact of COVID-19 according to a study done by LeanIn and McKinsey and Company.

Forbes
You don’t need to be an economist to grasp the scale of America’s post-COVID-19 labor shortage. You need only to look out the window as you drive past industrial parks and commercial hubs – each “help wanted” and “now hiring” sign a symbol of the struggle to find workers. According to a recent survey from Deloitte, finding the right talent is now 36 percent harder for manufacturers than it was in 2018, part of a trend that could leave as many as 2.1 million jobs unfilled by 2030.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Most metallic glass alloys form a hard, smooth surface. This gives metallic glass gears a long lifetime without the need for liquid lubricants, making them appealing for NASA robotics that operate in cold environments, where lubricants need to be warmed before operations.

Thomas Insights
A new study suggests that connecting individual workers to company success is among the best strategies used by manufacturers to retain their employees. The analysis – conducted by the Manufacturing Institute’s Center for Manufacturing Research and the American Psychological Association – interviewed 42 senior leaders and mid-level managers from a total of 14 manufacturing companies about their retention strategies between August and October of 2020. The resulting report sought to explore “what works, what motivates employees, and where employers likely can improve.”

3D Printing Media Network
A recent, detailed overview of the Army’s use of largely 3D printed engines in its upcoming Apache and other future VTOL military vehicles seemed to indicate that the Department of Defense in the U.S. is now taking AM even more seriously than it has up to this point. In fact, the DoD just released the official AM policy, detailing all aspects of the use of AM in the U.S. military's capabilities. According to the official document, which was just cleared for public release, the DoD will seek to “use AM to support joint force commanders and CCMD theater requirements, transform maintenance operations and supply chains, increase logistics resiliency, and improve self-sustainment and readiness for the Military Services.”

Tech Crunch
Varda Space Industries has raised a $42 million Series A to bring to manufacturing a key capability that can only be found off-world: microgravity. The eight-month-old startup is looking to establish its first manufacturing facility in space as early as 2023, and by doing so, bring back to Earth advanced products that can only be made under sustained periods of zero gravity.

Informa
IoT systems today are sifting through volumes of data to bring insight for processes like enterprise resource planning and manufacturing execution. But getting Internet of Things (IoT) data to integrate with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution systems (MESes) is another story. ERP and MES systems were originally designed as self-contained, monolithic entities, each with their own data repositories. They weren’t designed to continuously collect data from sensors, cameras and other IoT devices. It’s an issue that has reared its head in various enterprise environments.

Reuters
When researchers from MIT visited Rich Gent’s machine shop in Cleveland to see how automation was spreading to America’s small and medium-sized factories, they expected to find robots. They did not. Among the 34 companies with 500 employees or fewer in Ohio, Massachusetts and Arizona that the MIT researchers visited in their project, only one had bought robots in large numbers in the last five years – and that was an Ohio company that had been acquired by a Japanese multinational which pumped in money for the new automation.

Mining
Piedmont Lithium Inc. said it will delay first shipments of lithium chemicals to electric vehicle maker Tesla, Inc. and that it does not have a definitive date from when deliveries could begin.

Mining.com
The world’s biggest mining companies are about to start revealing how much cash they’re churning out from this year’s commodity boom. Look out for record profits followed by eye-watering dividend payouts. The top-five western diversified minters may have earned a combined $85 billion for the first half of the year, according to analyst estimates, more than double the level from a year ago.

Metal AM
Metal Additive Manufacturing technology company 3DEO, Los Angeles, California, reports that it has shipped its millionth production part: a safety razor product for Blackland Razors. This achievement comes within less than two years of commercializing its patented AM technology in 2020.

Engine + Powertrain Technology International
Ford’s plant in Romulus, Michigan, is to become the home of a new global battery center of excellence, dubbed Ford Ion Park, with which the OEM will accelerate research and development of battery and battery cell technology – including future battery manufacturing.

Engine + Powertrain Technology International
Electric mobility is rapidly changing the transport landscape as we know it. As markets around the globe grapple with electricity as the source of power for transportation, OEMs and commercial vehicle manufacturers alike are working hard to provide compelling vehicles – that not only meet customer demands but also increasingly stringent carbon emissions regulations.