Additive manufacturing is redefining what’s possible for product and part design, and businesses are increasingly using it in production. Overall additive manufacturing products and services worldwide grew by 19.5% to $15.244 billion in 2021, according to the 2022...
A rocket thruster demonstrator with integrated internal cooling channels was 3D printed at the end of 2022, using a newly developed copper alloy, GRCop-42, in a move that underscores additive manufacturing’s ability to accelerate innovation. The demonstrator uses a...
The last decade has seen manufacturing change at a staggering rate. Production series are shrinking, product lifespans are shortening, and custom designs are becoming the norm. This trend is challenging conventional manufacturing planning software to unprecedented...
More lasers mean more power, higher build rates and lower costs per part. At least that is the main expectation for the new generation of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) machines with two, three, four, or even twelve lasers. But the massive energy increase does have...
It’s easy to fall prey to the appeal of a one-size-fits-all approach. In additive manufacturing (AM), we see this in the unabating production of hardware and software that handle a single geometry representation or file format. This complacence has led to many...
When Emerson launched metal additive manufacturing (AM) in 2013, the software tools available were spread across multiple packages, ultimately leading the company to need 10 different programs to go from design to print-ready file. As the company’s metal AM division...
The industrial internet of things (IIoT) centres around one core proposition — the digitalisation of data. Over the last decade or more, data has become an extremely valuable commodity. We’re not talking about personal data here, which is an important issue on many...
Have you noticed how frequently the phrases “end-to-end” and “workflow” are utilised as part of the lexicon within the additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing industry these days? There is a good reason for that. It is because users of AM technologies — whether...
Manufacturing Execution System – or MES – can come across as a rather generic term, but understanding the real meaning and implementing it in a factory is about as important as it gets for any manufacturing operation, wherever they are located and however big or...
For years, 3D printing has been heralded as the “future of factories”that will “radically change the world” – but so far, the reality hasn’t exactly lived up to the hype. 3D printing, or additive manufacturing (AM) as it’s more appropriately termed by the industry,...
Technological innovation drives change—and yes, disruption—in manufacturing. Ever since the first Industrial Revolution, manufacturing has evolved in response to technological advancements. This is often driven by a single catalyst; for instance, Henry Ford’s assembly...
We’ve been on the cusp of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for a while, and it’s still not clear when or how it will come to fruition. Sure, these massive industrial changes rarely follow a straight line of implementation, though it may seem that way when we look at...
