Manufacturers can now automate CNC machine tending 75% faster.

Responding to ever-increasing labor shortage and supply chain challenges, Robotiq now offers a Machine Tending Application Solution that makes cobot automation more accessible than ever.

Lowering implementation costs by up to 50%, the new solution takes less than two hours to go from unboxing to machining the first part – no coding experience required.

“When a machine shop owner struggles to find employees to do the work, their first instinct is to look for new CNC machines that can run unattended for longer and with shorter changeover times. But those machines are costly, and this, combined with a longer lead time, makes for a less than ideal solution,” Samuel Bouchard, Robotiq CEO

Robotiq’s new solution features intuitive automation technology that emulates the machine operator. There is no need to modify or alter the machine controls. Since its non-intrusive, the Machine Tending Solution will work with any brand of CNC machine.

“Instead of hard-wiring the machine like with traditional automation, Robotiq’s Machine Tending Solution communication modules are non-invasive and do not require installation by certified technicians,” Bouchard explains. “The solution can be deployed in 2 to 3 hours, 75% faster than with traditional programming.”

Manufacturers automating with Robotiq solutions attest that it has simplified their lives: Vincent Roussy, manufacturing engineer at Usinatech, says, “This allowed us to stabilize production, delivery to customers, and productivity while solving our labor shortage challenge.”

On the shop floor, the solution also delivers peace of mind: “I never thought a robot would replace me, and I am happy to have my three robots; my speed keeps increasing,” says Hugo Santos, operator at Usinatech.

Ceramics Expo enhances position as North America’s leading advanced ceramics event with launch of new co-location.

The seventh edition of Ceramics Expo will take place on August 30-31, 2022, at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland, Ohio. To enhance its offering for 2022 and in response to developments in the use of advanced ceramic materials across high-tech industries, the event welcomes the new launch edition of Thermal Management Expo.

Exhibition Manager, Raymond Pietersen says, “The introduction of Thermal Management Expo is great news for the industry and even more so for the markets that already attend Ceramics Expo each year! We are confident the synergy between the two events will provide an engaging experience for our visitors but also increase the opportunity for our exhibitors to do business.”

The exhibition is set to welcome more than 350 global market leading exhibitors across the entire advanced ceramics and glass manufacturing supply chain, including GeoCorp Inc, Saint-Gobain Ceramics, Osterwalder Inc, Corning, and Bosch Advanced Ceramics.

Alongside the exhibition runs a free-to-attend conference, addressing the most pressing challenges facing stakeholders from across the advanced ceramics supply chain. Sessions will be delivered by technical experts from Morgan Advanced Materials, IMERYS Performance Minerals Americas, Air Force Research Laboratory, and more, delivering first-class thought leadership on topics including material advancements, key applications, and manufacturing developments.

Mark Mecklenborg, executive director at The American Ceramic Society (ACerS) says, “Ceramics Expo, now in its seventh year, provides an unrivaled opportunity to see firsthand and up close the innovations in materials, processes and products that are driving today’s ceramic manufacturing industry. ACerS is proud to be a founding partner of this event. If you are an engineer, researcher, business leader, decision maker or buyer in the ceramics and glass manufacturing industry, this is a must-attend event. More than 350 global suppliers and manufacturers will be front and center on the show floor, ready to show you their latest products and demonstrate their cutting-edge technology.”

Registration is open now and Ceramics Expo encourages interested visitors to register in advance, for free.

Scaffolds created by melt electrowriting aim to support new tissue formation.

Development of 3D printed artificial heart valves are designed to allow a patient’s own cells to form new tissue. To form these scaffolds using melt electrowriting – an advanced additive manufacturing technique – researchers created a new fabrication platform enabling them to combine different precise, customized patterns to fine-tune the scaffold’s mechanical properties. Their long-term goal is to create implants for children that develop into new tissue and therefore last a lifetime.

A close-up of a printed scaffold for a heart valve. The different structures that ensure the appropriate biomechanics are clearly visible.

In humans, four heart valves ensure blood flows in the correct direction and it’s essential that heart valves open and close properly. To do this, heart valve tissue is heterogeneous, meaning that heart valves display different biomechanical properties within the same tissue.

A team of researchers working with Petra Mela, professor of medical materials and implants at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), and Professor Elena De-Juan Pardo from The University of Western Australia, have imitated this heterogeneous structure using a 3D printing process called melt electrowriting. They have developed a platform that facilitates printing precise customized patterns and their combination, which enabled them to fine-tune different mechanical properties within the same scaffold.

Precise, customized fiber scaffolds Melt electrowriting is a comparatively new additive manufacturing technology using high voltage to create accurate patterns of very thin polymer fibers. A polymer is heated, melted, and pushed out of a printing head as a liquid jet to form the fibers.

During this process, a high-voltage electric field is applied, which considerably narrows the diameter of the polymer jet by accelerating it and pulling it towards a collector. This results in a thin fiber with a diameter typically in the range of five to fifty micrometers. Moreover, the electric field stabilizes the polymer jet, which is important for creating defined, precise patterns.

3D_ArtificialHeartValve-2--Kilian Mueller, a doctoral candidate at the TUM School of Engineering and Design, examines a 3D printed heart valve structure produced using melt electrowriting (MEW).

The “writing” of the fiber jet according to predefined patterns is conducted using a computer-controlled moving collector, that collects the emerging fiber along a defined pathway. The user specifies this pathway by programming its coordinates.

To reduce the programming associated with the creation of complex structures for heart valves, researchers developed software to easily assign different patterns to different regions of the scaffold by choosing from a library of available patterns. Furthermore, geometrical specifications such as length, diameter, and thickness of the scaffold can easily be adjusted via the graphical interface.

Scaffolds are compatible with cells and biodegradable The team used medical grade polycaprolactone (PCL) for 3D printing, which is compatible with cells and biodegradable. The idea is that once the PCL-heart valves are implanted, the patient’s own cells will grow on the porous scaffold, as has been the case in first cell culture studies. The cells might then potentially form new tissue before the PCL-scaffold degrades.

The PCL-scaffold is embedded in an elastin-like material that imitates properties of natural elastin present in real heart valves and provides micro-pores smaller than the pores of the PCL structure. The aim is to leave enough space for the cells to settle, but to seal the valves adequately for blood flow.

The engineered valves were tested using a mock flow circulatory system simulating physiological blood pressure and flow. The heart valves opened and closed correctly under the examined conditions.

Nanoparticles allow for visualization using MRI The PCL-material was further evolved and evaluated together with Franz Schilling, professor of biomedical magnetic resonance, and Sonja Berensmeier, professor of bioseparation engineering at TUM. By modifying PCL with ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles, researchers could visualize the scaffolds using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The modified material remains printable and compatible with cells. This might facilitate the translation of the technology to the clinics, as the scaffolds can be monitored upon implantation.

“Our goal is to engineer bioinspired heart valves that support the formation of new functional tissue in patients. Children would especially benefit from such a solution, as current heart valves don’t grow with the patient and must be replaced over the years in multiple surgeries. Our heart valves, in contrast, mimic the complexity of native heart valves and are designed to let a patient’s own cells infiltrate the scaffold,” Mela says.

The next step on the way to the clinic will be pre-clinical studies in animal models. The team also works on further improving the technology and developing new biomaterials.

Plex DemandCaster supply chain planning with machine learning increases predictability and responsiveness.

Plex Systems, a Rockwell Automation company and a leader in cloud-delivered smart manufacturing solutions, announced new machine learning capabilities for Plex DemandCaster Supply Chain Planning (SCP), enhancing forecast accuracy to improve customer service at lower levels of inventory coverage.

Manufacturers need more sophisticated supply chain planning technology in response to shortages in workforce and raw materials, logistics challenges, and impacts to overall business revenue. Business planners are tasked with forecasting and responding to more “black swan” type events and are looking for innovative ways to include a variety of data sources to expand their planning resources.

Plex DemandCaster Supply Chain Planning unites business functions within the organization with their planning variables to solve inventory problems quickly and proactively, helping planners easily interpret data ?with automated statistical forecasting while enabling a continuous planning and execution feedback loop.? Now, the addition of machine learning for DemandCaster SCP dramatically advances the automation of pattern recognition and the application of correlated related data to improve forecast accuracy. Higher forecast accuracies cascade through the supply chain planning process by reducing the need to carry extra inventories to buffer against uncertainties.

“The days of steady and dependable supply chains that enable long-term lean and just-in-time replenishment to manage costs are behind us. Businesses now understand that planning and forecasting must include the assumption of disruption and rely on data to navigate this new normal,” comments Ara Surenian, vice president, product management at Plex Systems. “Adding machine learning to Plex DemandCaster Supply Chain Planning empowers customers to overcome supply planning challenges and digitally transform their planning. By infusing the sales forecasting process with machine learning, customers can bring in a wealth of additional data as an input to the forecasting process that a human nor traditional statistical forecasting methods can discern. These additional inputs are used to help calculate and recalibrate the process to improve forecast accuracy.”

Plex offers the only single-instance, multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) manufacturing platform operating at scale, including solutions for MES, ERP, quality, supply chain planning and management, asset performance management, production monitoring, process automation and analytics. The cloud native Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform serves more than 700 customers and manages more than eight billion transactions per day. In September 2021, Plex was acquired by Rockwell Automation Inc., the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, to expand its industrial cloud software offerings.

PK 5000 engineered material and digital manufacturing expansions fill critical market gaps.

Jabil Inc. has launched PK 5000, an eco-friendly, powder-based additive material engineered to deliver improved strength, chemical resistance and resilience in comparison to general-purpose nylon materials, such as PA 12. This patent-pending material has been formulated to support highly demanding automotive, consumer electronics, defense, medical and industrial manufacturing applications.

“Our latest engineered material will disrupt the market for powder-bed fusion technologies by improving upon existing polymers to offer enhanced processing and performance properties,” says Matt Torosian, director, Product Management, Jabil Additive. “With PK 5000, we are introducing new innovations to meet a broad range of customer requirements while accelerating the adoption of additive manufacturing.”

Delivering material innovations from beaker to box PK 5000 was created, tested, and validated at Jabil’s Materials Innovation Center in Chaska, Minnesota, where polymer formulations, compound developments and material system integration are completed from start-to-finish under one roof. Highly experienced additive manufacturing engineers, chemists, materials scientists, and production experts leverage Jabil’s innovations in materials science to oversee each step of the beaker-to-box process of developing customized powders and filaments all under an ISO 9001-2015 quality management system.

This newest material features a unique combination of chemical and mechanical properties, such as high-impact strength, high-abrasion resistance, and improved elongation over other nylon materials to withstand functional testing and use. Equally important, PK 5000 has high-barrier properties and low-moisture absorption, which may be critical for ensuring the quality and resilience of certain parts and products exposed to fuel and water. Moreover, the polyketone resin used to make PK 5000 is an eco-friendly, low-carbon material that is made from carbon monoxide. The ability to leverage carbon monoxide, which is a leading cause of atmospheric pollution, may reduce overall carbon footprint.

EOS, Farsoon and 3D Systems are currently evaluating PK 5000 for their printer platforms. Jabil is developing process parameters for all major SLS platforms to ensure widespread access to PK 5000.

Extending capabilities from ideation to industrialization In addition to advancements in materials, Jabil continues to extend its global additive manufacturing platforms and solutions to complement its world-class manufacturing capabilities. Jabil has deployed hundreds of 3D printers – from desktop models to highly sophisticated industrial systems – to address a vast range of prototyping, tooling and volume-scale production demands.

Jabil’s rapid tooling operations, additive manufacturing labs and tech centers in North America, Europe and Asia are augmented by AS9100-, ISO 13485-, and ISO 9001-certified production centers for aerospace, healthcare and other rigorous applications. Jabil is well positioned to integrate the best of additive and traditional manufacturing to produce differentiated parts and products using innovative materials, proven Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) principles, industry-leading manufacturing processes, as well as vendor-agnostic technologies and machines.