The next-generation ion engine that may one day send American astronauts to Mars has passed a major milestone. Working in coordination with NASA engineers from Glenn Research and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Aerojet Rocketdyne says it has completed its early systems integration test of the Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) 13-kW Hall thruster that it is building for NASA, clearing the way for further development.

AGMA will host its annual SRN event this October 17-18 in Detroit, MI. This event will provide a variety of speakers on workforce, emerging technology, and the steel market. Two highlights of the event include presentations and a tour of FANUC American facility and a presentation by Meritor VP, John Bennett, responsible for their product development. Complete registration information available on the AGMA website.

The future factory is coming in the form of autonomous warehouses where robots talk to each other over secure Wi-Fi, and where production machines are fixed before they fail. By 2025, the sector called Industry 4.0 — the Fourth Industrial Revolution  — is expected to generate close to $1 trillion in economic value.

According to the EHS Daily Advisor’s recent Annual Safety Report, employee engagement tops the list of safety challenges faced by manufacturing companies in the U.S.

Thanks to the continued growth in global manufacturing, the adoption of manufacturing execution systems (MES) shows no sign of slowing down. Valued at $7.86 billion in 2014, the global MES market is expected to expand 11.1 percent CAGR between 2015 and 2025, reaching $19.36 billion by 2023. 

A scientific team at the DoE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has devised a new way to take the local temperature of a material from an area about a billionth of a meter wide. This should let engineers and scientists better understand the unusual physical and chemical behaviors that are occurring at the nanoscale level. 

Siemens, alongside its development partner Verkehrsbetrieb Potsdam (ViP), will present their findings at InfoTrans 2018 to show how a tram will drive autonomously in real traffic on September 18-21.

ABS published the ABS Guidance Notes on Additive Manufacturing, established a consistent approach to three-dimensional printing of marine and offshore materials equipment. 

Provides an introduction and emphasize the differences between parallel (the experience base) axis and worm and crossed axis helical gears. Describe the basics of worm and crossed axis helical gears, their fundamental design principals, application guidelines and recommendations, lubrication requirement, a discussion of accuracy and quality and summarize with a brief review of common failure modes.

Global Trade, a magazine focusing on U.S. companies doing international business, has selected Alabama as the nation’s top state for manufacturing. The state topped a list that included Florida, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Michigan, South Carolina, Tennessee and Ohio. Alabama got high marks for AIDT, its workforce development agency, its work pre-certifying development sites through the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, and rapid permitting process.

Northeast Ohio is a region built on manufacturing, steel and automotive foremost among others. It was a job that many aspired to have because of the stable life it provided, but for many modern manufacturers, the ability to find stability in a workforce today isn’t easy. 

The Timken Company, a global leader in engineered bearings and power transmission products, today announced that it completed the previously announced acquisition of Cone Drive, a leader in precision drives used in diverse markets including solar, automation, aerial platforms, and food and beverage.

Dyson Ltd., best known for its vacuum cleaners and hand dryers, is charging ahead with a $2.6 billion push to start building electric cars, unveiling plans to turn a former airfield into a vehicle-testing site. The technology center at the former Hullavington Airfield in England will bring the British manufacturer’s investment to 200 million pounds to create engineering work spaces and over 10 miles of test tracks.

German researchers say that they have found ways of reducing the amount of critical rare-earth materials needed to build electric motors by up to 80 percent. In a five-year project that has just ended, the researchers from eight Franhofer Institutes pooled their expertise to find ways of reducing the need for rare-earth materials by a combination of optimizing manufacturing processes, developing new approaches to recycling and looking for new materials that could replace rare-earths

Danfoss is buying Axco-Motors, a Finnish manufacturer of large electric motor and generators for applications such as renewable energy, marine vessels and off-highway vehicles.

IoT, IIoT and Industry 4.0: Chances are you’ve heard these terms tossed around at some point, but still can’t quite put a finger on what they mean. This article aims to solve the confusion surrounding each of these, along with outlining the benefits to businesses that choose to embrace them. 

The idea of Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS), which sees companies pay a subscription fee for robots rather than buying them upfront, is gaining ground in manufacturing and logistics, as Jessica Twentyman reports.

The NextGenAM collaborative project was annouced last year, dedicated to developing and implementing next generation industrial additive manufacturing technology. The partners involved include Premium AEROTEC, EOS, and Daimler. A goal of the project was to develop the basis of a future system for series production using 3D printing technologies. 

Learn and define the concept of epicyclic gearing is including some basic history and the differences among simple planetary gear systems, compound planetary gear systems and star drive gear systems. Cover concepts on the arrangement of the individual components including the carrier, sun, planet, ring and star gears and the rigid requirements for the system to perform properly. Critical factors such as load sharing among the planet or star gears, sequential loading, equal planet/star spacing, relations among the numbers of teeth on each element, calculation of the maximum and optimum number of planet/star gears for a specific system will be covered. Provides an in-depth discussion of the methodology by which noise and vibration may be optimized for such systems and load sharing guidelines for planet load sharing.