Engineering

Cobot companies in industrial applications

There are well over 50 manufacturers of collaborative robots (cobots) worldwide, but only a handful of these companies have so far deployed cobots on any meaningful level of scale. Tens of thousands of cobots have been sold as of 2019 and earned US$500 million in annual revenue for world markets. The Industrial Collaborative Robots Competitive Assessment analysed and ranked 12 collaborative robot vendors in the industry – ABB, Aubo Robotics, Automata, Doosan Robotics, FANUC, Franka Emika, Kuka AG, Precise Automation, Productive Robotics, Techman Robot, Universal Robots, and Yaskawa Motoman. For this competitive assessment, innovation criteria included payload, software, ergonomics and human-machine interaction, experimentation and safety; implementation criteria focused on units and revenue, cost and ROI, partnerships, value-added services, and the number of employees. Market leaders in cobots generally have well-developed cobot rosters, in many cases backed up by an ecosystem platform that integrates applications, accessories, and end-of-arm-tooling (EOAT) solutions in with the base hardware. With 37,000 cobots sold so far, UR leads, followed by Taiwanese provider Techman with 10,000, and Korea-based Doosan with over 2,000. Precise Automation, which uses an advanced direct drive solution to develop faster collaborative robots, was cited as the most innovative of the 12 providers, just edging out Universal Robots, who claimed the overall top spot due to their significant lead in implementation. There are several companies that are too young to be challenging the dominant parties in the cobot market but are developing new and disruptive technologies that will allow them rise to prominence in the years to come. Productive Robotics is a case-in-point. It has an arm with inbuilt vision, 7 axes for superior flexibility, long reach, and a very affordable price point, but has yet to deploy at scale. Automata, a British company develops a ‘desk-top’ cobot costing less than US$7,000, is significantly […]

Xcelerator speeds digital future of industry

Xcelerator is an integrated portfolio of software, services and application development platform that can be personalised and adapted to fit customer and industry-specific needs to help companies of all sizes become digital enterprises. Xcelerator combines the full portfolio of Siemens’ software for design, engineering and manufacturing with an expanded Mendix low-code, multiexperience application development platform. The Mendix platform now includes cloud and app services for digital engineering and Internet of Things (IoT) powered by MindSphere the cloud-based, open IoT operating system from Siemens, in addition to Mendix’s market-leading unified low-code and no-code development environments. Unique to Xcelerator, this platform drives digital transformation by enabling anyone in the ecosystem, including citizen developers and engineers to easily build, integrate and extend their existing data and systems.

Powerful tube bending machines for Southeast Asia’s future

Powerful tube bending machines for Southeast Asia’s future The Southeast Asian economy is booming: countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam are increasingly becoming production centres for companies from across the world. Investments and spending on infrastructure are on the rise in the region. Against this backdrop, Schwarze-Robitec will be at the Tube Southeast Asia trade fair in Bangkok from September 18th to 20th. This is the first time that the German tube bending specialist will showcase its powerful tube bending machines at the Thai event, which is an offshoot of the Tube trade fair in Düsseldorf. Under the “Made in Germany” umbrella, the Cologne-based company will be located in the “German Pavilion”, the official joint exhibition stand of German companies that is being supported by the Foreign Trade Fair Participation Programme of Germany. The “Made in Germany” seal stands for the quality and tradition of German engineering, both of which Schwarze-Robitec embodies. Schwarze-Robitec’s powerful tube bending machines are used in many different fields. In the automotive industry, for example, the High Performance machines enable extremely high production speeds. This is largely thanks to their intelligent NxG control system, which enables almost all CNC axes to be operated simultaneously during the bending process. This helps reduce production times by up to 40 percent depending on the tube geometry. Schwarze-Robitec’s Heavy Duty machines, meanwhile, offer highly precise bending results even for very small radii and challenging tube and pipe geometries, which is a demand of the shipbuilding industry. The booster bending machines are able to bend – with or without a mandrel – even high-strength materials with minimal wall thinning and optimal ovality. This is a particular requirement of the boiler and power plant industry, which Schwarze-Robitec is able to fulfil with its Boiler & Power series. High Performance for the […]

China re launches Earthquake Catastrophe Model v2.0′

One hundred experts from the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Emergency Management Department, seismological science research institutes and the insurance industry convened for the summit and unveiling of ‘China Earthquake Catastrophe Model v2.0’. China Reinsurance Group (China Re) launched the ‘China Earthquake Catastrophe Model v2.0’, the country’s first proprietary commercial earthquake catastrophe model certified by the Seismological Society of China, at the 3rd China Re Catastrophe Risk and Insurance Summit held here on Thursday, August 22. This was a milestone that will fundamentally change China’s long dependence on foreign earthquake catastrophe models, and systematically improve the capacity of China’s earthquake catastrophe risk quantitative management. Nearly one hundred experts from the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Emergency Management Department, seismological science research institutes and the insurance industry had convened for the summit, and to witness the unveiling of ‘China Earthquake Catastrophe Model v2.0’. China Re has held the Catastrophe Risk and Insurance Summit for three consecutive years, since establishing the China Reinsurance Catastrophe Research Center in 2017. ‘China Earthquake Catastrophe Model v2.0’ is a concerted milestone achievement by the government, academia and enterprise. To develop the model, China Re initiated the China Re Catastrophe Risk Management Company, the country’s first fin-tech corporation for catastrophe risk control, and brought in a professional model development team with overseas working experience. China Re integrated its scientific research and data resources with the support of professional research institutes including the Institute of Geophysics, and Institute of Engineering Mechanics of the China Earthquake Administration. China Re applied for the State Key Research Project, ‘Earthquake Insurance Loss Assessment Model and Applications’, and received additional funds from the Ministry of Science and Technology. The research grants ensured that the model was completed within two years. Currently, the model has been recognized by the Seismological […]

NEC to deploy supercomputer for German Aerospace Center (DLR)

NEC Corporation has announced that Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) – the German Aerospace Center – has awarded NEC with the delivery and installation of a new High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster solution, which constitutes one of the largest recent HPC tenders in Europe. NEC will deliver and deploy a direct-liquid cooled HPC solution comprising 2,300 Gigabyte compute nodes based on the AMD EPYC 7601 processor, totaling up to 147,200 cores within a budget of more than 20 million Euros. The new DLR cluster will be hosted and administrated by the Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) at the new Datacenter of the Technische Universitat Dresden (TU Dresden), according to the strategic scientific co-operation between NEC and DLR. The very challenging frame conditions for power and energy efficiency of DLR and ZIH requires most of the total solution to be direct-liquid cooled (DLC), at a warm water inlet temperature of 35degC. NEC employs a unique cooling solution with CPUs cooled directly and all other components employing secondary water cooling in closed racks. rmal insulation of the racks minimises inefficient air cooling in the computer room. The complete management of the solution includes such functions as a software environment for controlling the power consumption at runtime. NEC partnered with CoolIT Systems and Gigabyte to design Passive Coldplate Loops for servers equipped with AMD EPYC CPUs. The entire system was developed to work with high coolant temperatures to provide additional opportunities for heat re-use. Some non-DLC components are cooled by a thermally insulated liquid side-cooler solution supplied by Schafer IT. The complete solution will include 116 large-memory nodes with a total of 58 Terabyte of main memory, 20 visualsation nodes with two NVIDIA P5000 GPUs for remote visualization with NICE DCV, and a Lustre-based parallel HPC storage […]

Electric car lithium battery pack and power connections. Blue toned.

Mazda drives creativity using generative engineering tools

Mazda Motor Corporation has adopted the Capital electrical design software suite from Mentor, a Siemens business, to help maximise innovation in the design of next-generation automotive electrical systems. Recognised worldwide for its successful launch of innumerable innovative technologies, Mazda uses Capital for model-based generative design for the electrical and electronic systems of the entire vehicle platform. The Capital automated generative design flow helps Mazda automotive design teams manage design complexity and changes across the entire vehicle platform, minimising errors and reducing costs. The development of safe and efficient electrical designs has become a critical task as the automotive industry moves towards large scale system developments such as electrified powertrains and autonomous driving. These designs are often based on entirely new architectures and have become so complex that advanced software tools are needed to enable development efforts. Capital tools deliver real time feedback against target metrics such as cost, weight, and network bandwidth consumption. This allows engineers to explore alternative design approaches, which is extremely important for large scale system developments represented by electric and autonomous vehicles. Capital software also provides Mazda with extensive simulation and verification functionalities. At Mazda, from system design, harness design and verification down to manufacturing and service documentation, outputs of each process have been generated in its natural language, requiring designers to translate between processes and fill in the missing pieces using their talents and skills. “In order to remove ambiguity while maintaining the diversity of expressions that are characteristics of these natural languages, we applied formal methods to eliminate the loss in information transfer and set a goal to build a development environment that is consistent and connected all the way through the manufacturing phase,” said Kazuichi Fujisaka, Technical Leader, Mazda Motor Corporation. “Furthermore, we also aim to shift to a development methodology that allows […]

Acropower to build waste to energy plant

Acromec Limited, an established specialist engineering service provider in the field of controlled environments serving mainly the healthcare, pharmaceutical, biomedical science, research and academia sectors, today announced that its 80%-owned subsidiary Acropower Pte. Ltd. has signed an agreement with Chew’s Agriculture Pte Ltd for Acropower to build, own and operate a waste-to-energy power plant that will convert poultry waste into energy. The Facility will be built on CAPL’s new farm as it relocates to Neo Tiew Road, off Lim Chu Kang. The Agreement stipulates that the Facility will process and convert waste from the Farm into biogas for use in generating electricity, which will then be supplied back to the Farm for a period of fifteen years at no more than a 10% discount to the prevailing Energy Market Authority electricity tariff rate. CAPL shall at all times purchase the Farm’s electricity requirements from Acropower. The Agreement is expected to result in a diversification of the Group’s business into the renewable energy sector, and will be subject to the approval of its shareholders in a general meeting to be convened in due course. Conditional upon obtaining all shareholders’ and other internal corporate approvals required, construction of the Facility is expected to be completed by 31 March 2020. The Agreement is not expected to have any material impact on the consolidated net tangible assets and earnings per share of the Group for the financial year ending 30 September 2019. At the initial stages, the Facility is committed to supply to the Farm no less than 0.5 megawatts per hour based on processing the daily waste produced by 600,000 egg-laying chickens (“Layers”), although it will have the capacity to provide up to 0.8 megawatt per hour on a daily basis based on processing the daily waste produced by up to 720,000 Layers. […]

AOGC sets the tone for energy industry future

Kuala Lumpur -The 20th Asia Oil & Gas Conference (AOGC) came to a close, leaving industry players and policy makers with a clear view of the challenges, opportunities and the solutions required to address the new energy future. The final day of AOGC kicked off with Dr Fereidun Fesharaki sharing his views on both the short and medium term oil price outlook, together with the new International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations, the growth of LNG and the geopolitical outlook. He also noted that current issues in the Middle East could impact both international LNG and crude supply. At a session on “A New World Order” on how disruptive drivers and forces continue to alter the global industrial landscape, Prof Dr Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Senior Research Advisor at the Khazanah Research Institute, said: “Populism, protectionism and reverse globalisation are very much on the radar at the moment. The risk of cyber-attacks which could cripple global and political financial systems, are on the increase. How we deal with these issues will determine our business future”. Simon Flowers, Chairman (Energy) and Chief Analyst at Wood Mackenzie said: “There’s a lot of momentum behind protectionism at the moment and in some respects, this is quite good because I think it can lead to greater energy independence and a desire for self-sufficiency.” Sustainability was very much on the agenda throughout AOGC 2019 and Dr Ken Koyama, Chief Economist and Managing Director at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan, addressed the structural changes that will be affecting the industry due to the changing energy mix and how energy companies should position themselves strategically in what will be a low-carbon future within a circular economy. Bringing AOGC 2019 to a close, the Chairman of the A0GC 2019 Organising Committee, Mohd Yusri Mohamed Yusof, said AOGC 2019 attracted […]

The four factors essential to building a quality production line

-Andrew Stackpole, Assembly Shop Manager at Facteon Developing an efficient and polished machine building process can take a manufacturing company decades. What’s most important is that throughout this process, the focus is on building a quality production line that allows for the manufacturing of best-in-class product. Since beginning my career as a Machine Builder in 1994 and working through to my current role as Assembly Shop Manager at Facteon, I’ve come to learn that there are four key factors involved in developing a quality production line. 1. Quality components produce quality product By keeping the production of machinery components in-house where practical and possible, you will play a more active role in quality control. It was for this very reason that Facteon established its own in-house Build Shop and Machine Shop to cater to internal and external customers. The team retains full control over every component produced and as it’s not heavily relying on delivery by third parties, it can be certain that the component will be available on site when required. To achieve the necessary levels of precision in component manufacturing, collaboration is key – both in the initial phase of producing your components and in the build phase of the production line. Looking at opportunities to integrate the latest technologies with more traditional machining methods, will allow you to fully harness the potential of the machinery while using the latest technology to improve precision and efficiencies. Partnering with reliable external suppliers For any components that can’t be produced in-house, consider looking beyond your own capabilities and using the services of thoroughly vetted external providers. For example, Facteon uses suppliers based in New Zealand, China and the United States and vets these suppliers through a tiered rating system to ensure that our standards are met. If you’ve outsourced the […]

Boeing 787 Unified Livery In-flight over Clouds

HandySCAN 3D scanner meets Boeing’s requirements

Creaform, the worldwide leader in portable 3D measurement solutions and non-destructive testing (NDT) solutions, has announced that its HandySCAN 3D metrology-grade 3D laser scanner can now be used for recording physical attributes of aircraft dents and blends on all models of Boeing commercial airplanes. Boeing has released a service letter with guidance on the use of 3D scanners for measuring dents and blends on airplanes. The SmartDENT 3D solution and the flagship HandySCAN 3D scanner were used in the process of guiding Boeing’s quality requirements for the service letter. “Creaform is proud to see leaders such as Boeing, turn to 3D scanning solutions for surface defect inspection. With SmartDENT 3D, our goal is to provide the most accurate damage assessment to our customers, so they can make informed and safe decisions, while getting their aircraft back flying with minimal down time,” said Jérôme Beaumont, Global NDT Business Manager at Creaform. Overview of SmartDENT 3D benefits: Speed: 80 times faster than the pit gauge technique. It is the fastest and most reliable aircraft surface damage inspection tool available on the market. Metrology-grade measurements for aircraft maintenance: The scanner is accurate to 0.025 mm (0.0009 in.) and has a resolution of up to 0.100 mm (0.0039 in.) with high repeatability and traceable certificate. Intuitive pass/fail assessments: With its intuitive design and real-time software visualization, Creaform’s NDT solutions ensure short learning curves and minimal operator experience influence on the accuracy of results. Live visualisation and portability: Weighting less than a kilo, the handheld scanner is the perfect tool for work in hangars or directly outdoors. Users can easily perform 3D surface inspection of any part of an aircraft on which they would use manual techniques—including on and under wings. In addition to complying with Boeing’s service letter, Creaform HandySCAN 3D scanners are listed […]

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