Each year AGMA holds a technical meeting showcasing some of the top technical papers in our industry. Mark your calendars for October 17-19 in Rosemont, IL, for this event. But for submitters —you have until Friday to get your abstracts in to present at the event. 

Take your first course of 2022 virtually with AGMA! Our DGD course goes beyond simple service factors to provide students with an understanding of the difference between “designing” a gear and “optimizing a gear design.” The course will be held from Noon-4:00 p.m. each day, February 22-24 and March 1-3.

You have a few weeks to catch up on the 2021 AGMA Emerging Technology webinars. Free access to the webinars is available on the website. We will begin our 2022 series in February. 

AGMA provides a wealth of networking opportunities for all personnel in the gear industry. From business and emerging technology committees to those that develop the technical standards you can find yourself a place here.

Forbes
Small-town manufacturing has become big business. Private equity companies in the U.S. have set their sights on American manufacturing as a great investment opportunity. They have shown a particular interest in the 25,000 small manufacturers across the country that are each generating less than $10 million in annual revenue. These shops are increasingly being purchased and quietly rolled up, along with entire supply chains for OEMs.

Detroit Free Press via Yahoo!
In a historic turn, Toyota Motor North America has taken the U.S. sales crown from General Motors for 2021 after the shortage of semiconductor chips severely hampered GM’s ability to build enough new vehicles to meet demand.

Gear Technology
Power management company Eaton has announced it has completed the acquisition of Royal Power Solutions, a U.S.-based manufacturer of high-precision electrical connectivity components used in electric vehicle, energy management, industrial and mobility markets. Under the terms of the agreement, Eaton paid $600 million for Royal Power Solutions, which represents approximately 12.6 times the company’s estimated 2022 EBITDA.

Bloomberg via Yahoo! Finance
France is aiming to raise 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) to help secure enough supply for metals for industries like battery manufacturing as prices of raw materials skyrocket. The government wants to reduce reliance on supplies of nickel, cobalt and lithium from outside the European Union.

3D Printing Industry
The U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center has issued a total of six new contracts focused on protecting military technologies by way of additive manufacturing. As part of the program, six select vendors will develop novel prototype projects using 3D printing technology. The Center believes additive manufacturing can be leveraged by the military to help safeguard its internal systems from intrusion or attack.

Association of Equipment Manufacturers
Both the immediate and long-term future of the equipment manufacturing industry will be defined by the development of a number of prominent trends, each of which are poised to have a significant impact in 2022 (and, in many cases, beyond). It’s critically important for equipment manufacturers to not only develop a keen understanding of these trends, but also how they will evolve over time.

Industry Week
Just like manufacturers that failed to switch from manual to automated processes during the Industrial Revolution found themselves obsolete, so it goes with the digital era. Manufacturers that are not digitally transforming, learning how to network their shop floors and gather data for long term strategic assessment and planning are going to find themselves falling well behind manufacturers that do so.

New Atlas
San Francisco startup Petra says its new contactless thermal drilling robot can make steady progress through the hardest rock on Earth — stuff that would normally destroy drilling equipment — so quickly and cheaply that it could make a lot of underground infrastructure projects economically feasible.

Automation
Multiple technologies have emerged in recent years that are instrumental in driving the advancement of smart manufacturing and the Industrial IoT. These include advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML), operational intelligence, advanced robotics, cyber-physical systems and generative design for additive manufacturing. While each of these technologies is changing the face of manufacturing today, ARC Advisory Group research suggests that the Industrial IoT, connected smart assets, and especially the Digital Twin are having the most immediate and significant impact on how companies implement technologies that enable smart manufacturing.

Machine Design
The specialization of engineering and manufacturing disciplines drove industry to formalize the cross-functional knowledge needed to re-integrate the specialties. 

New Equipment Digest
According to findings by the United States’ Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reported by Forbes, by October 2021, the number of data breaches publicly had already exceeded the total for 2020. This made it a record year for cyberattacks.

Manufacturing Global
Bill Scudder, SVP and GM of AIoT Solutions at AspenTech, shares his predictions on AI, automation and workplace culture for 2022. 

Green Car Reports
Tesla tunes the Model S Plaid with a Track Mode. Apartment-building charging could be more feasible with peak-demand smarts. Why nearly every vehicle maker is so optimistic about electric last-mile delivery vans. And is a solid-state battery pack bound for the next Toyota Prius? All this and more in this article.

Semiconductor Engineering
Northwestern University and the Toyota Research Institute have developed a new machine learning algorithm and library to help accelerate the synthesis of new nanomaterials. The combination of the algorithm and a large defined dataset will enable researchers to devise new structures for use in clean energy, chemical, automotive and other applications.

Press release
SKF has completed the acquisition of Laser Cladding Venture n.v. (LCV), an additive manufacturing company based in Belgium. LCV is a niche engineering start-up specialized in various additive manufacturing technologies and processes, which can be applied to support SKF’s service and remanufacturing offering.

Mining.com
Researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University may have found a way to revitalize rechargeable lithium batteries, potentially boosting the range of electric vehicles and battery life in next-gen electronic devices. In a study published in the journal Nature, the researchers explain that they were able to manipulate the islands of inactive lithium that form over repeated charge-discharge cycles.