Smart Manufacturing

NUM and Chinese partnership develop machining centre

CNC specialist NUM has helped the Chinese machine building company Original Point Machine Tools (OPMT) to develop an advanced 8-axis CNC machining centre capable of processing many different types of materials, including metal, ceramics, glass and cemented carbide. OPMT is a relatively small but fast-growing company based in Fo’shan – of Guangdong Province – in south China. It is rapidly acquiring a reputation for innovative complex engineering: after developing a highly successful 4-axis milling centre for an automotive production line, it then created a compact 5-axis milling station for the dental industry. For its latest project, OPMT was asked by Guangdong University of Technology to develop a machining centre that combined high speed laser cutting and milling capabilities. This key provincial university is located in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China, and provides a wide range of courses, with a major emphasis on engineering. OPMT chose to partner with NUM for its CNC expertise and with the Xi’an Zhongke Microcrystalline Manufacturing Company and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to help with some of the complex materials processing issues. The result is the ML125 8-axis multi-function machining centre. The machine has a dual laser head that is capable of switching between a 20 watt picosecond laser for very high speed cutting and an ultrafast 10 watt femtosecond laser for improved process quality. The femtosecond laser is capable of drilling and cutting almost any type of material, and its very short 1030 nm wavelength means that it is suitable for micro/nano processing applications. Entirely controlled by NUM’s latest-generation Flexium+ 68 CNC platform, the ML125 machining centre has eight servo axes, two independent NC channels and fast application-specific I/Os embedded in the NCK hardware. Movement of the fully articulated laser head is controlled by five NUMDrive X servo drives, with high speed interpolation between all five […]

MHIEC to build waste to energy plant in Kawasaki

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Environmental & Chemical Engineering Co., Ltd. (MHIEC) has received an order from Kawasaki City (Kanagawa Prefecture) to build its Tachibana Waste to Energy (WtE) Plant, a municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration plant in Kawasaki’s Takatsu District. The existing facility will be rebuilt as a stoker type incinerator (1) with a total waste treatment capacity of 600 tonnes per day (tpd). The order is a joint venture project with Taisei Corporation, and is valued at 29.8 billion yen. Completion is scheduled for September 2023. The Tachibana WtE Plant had operated for around 40 years, but the facilities have aged and the incineration plant ceased operations in March 2015. The WtE Plant subsequently closed in 2016. The current facilities will be dismantled and removed, and construction will begin on the new centre. The new MSW incineration plant will comprise three stoker type incinerators, each with a capacity of 200 tpd, as well as other related equipment. MHIEC acquired MHI’s waste treatment plant business in 2008, incorporating MHI’s environmental protection systems technology, as well as its broad expertise in the construction and operation of waste management facilities in Japan and overseas. Based on its strong track record, MHIEC is well positioned to provide comprehensive solutions for plant construction and operation. MHIEC will pursue further orders by building new advanced WtE plant that contribute to the formation of a resource-recycling society, enhancing the energy efficiency and stable operation of existing plants, and providing solutions that lower operation, maintenance and other lifecycle costs. (1) A stoker furnace is the main type used at MSW incineration plants. The solid waste is combusted as it moves along on a fire grate made of heat-resistant castings.

Epson launches N6 compact 6-Axis robot and hollow force sensor

Epson has launched the new N6 compact 6-axis (vertically articulated) industrial robot and the SH250LH, a new force sensor with a hollow design. Epson’s N series of compact 6-axis robots perform tasks in tight spaces more efficiently than other robots because of a uniquely engineered “folding” arm. The N6 has a longer arm (1,000 mm) and can handle higher payloads (6 kg) than Epson’s previously released N2 and is ideal for loading/unloading small electronic products and automotive parts into/from test equipment. It is also perfect for shelving/unshelving medical products and much more and has a smaller installation footprint than earlier 6-axis robots and can reach a wider range of places, from the top shelf to the bottom. These features increase productivity and the efficiency with which factory space is used. N6 Features The unique arm structure and arm length give the N6 a small installation footprint while allowing it to reach high places. Taking advantage of the N series’ folding arm design and a long (1,000 mm) arm, the N6 can access locations that are higher than those that can be reached by the N2 and by Epson’s 900-mm class 6-axis robots (the C4L and C8L). Users can exploit these features by laying out factory shelves and equipment vertically instead of horizontally to enable the N6 to use previously wasted vertical space. Even with an arm length of 1,000 mm, the N6 can reach objects at the same height as the C8XL, Epson’s 1,400-mm class 6-axis robot. Moreover, because the N6 can be installed closer to shelves and equipment than a 1,400-mm arm, the installation space can be reduced*2 by about 75%. In addition to installing the N6 in narrow spaces and inside equipment where robots previously would not fit, users have the freedom to consider more compact factory layouts. 2. Hollow arm provides storage space for cables and hoses A hollow arm design is employed to allow cables and hoses to be routed through the centre of the arm at joints […]

First Pacific Patrol Boat launched

The first of 21 Guardian Class Pacific Patrol Boats to be designed and built by Austal has been launched. The launch of the first vessel comes just two years after the contract was awarded to the Australian shipbuilder. The first vessel is now scheduled for delivery to Papua New Guinea in late October 2018. The launch of the first Pacific Patrol Boat is a milestone for Austal, with the Pacific Patrol Boat Replacement (PPB-R) program marking the company’s first steel ship program. “Austal is proud to be delivering the PPB-R program for the Commonwealth. This is the first steel ship program we have managed and we are doing so on time and on budget,” Austal chief executive David Singleton said. “It is a testament to the skills, experience and management of the Austal PPB-R team that the first vessel has met its project milestones for design and build, on schedule. The overall construction program is well underway, with vessels two and three in build and the fourth vessel commencing construction in June.” Singleton said the program will support 200 direct jobs at Austal and 200 indirect jobs in the broader Australian industry in a program that now extends out to late 2023. This employment is in addition to several hundred jobs at Austal created by a number of large commercial export contracts currently under construction and planned for construction at the Henderson shipyard. “We are already working on export opportunities leveraging off the Pacific Patrol Boats, which will assist Australia to sustain its sovereign naval shipbuilding industry. Austal has already delivered over 40 patrol boats to international customers around the world,” Singleton said. The Pacific Patrol Boat contract was awarded to Austal in May 2016, worth $305 million for the original 19 vessels and associated in service support, with a […]

The Interview: FARO

Spokesperson: CHEW Beow Kwan, Product Marketing Associate Manager, Asia Pacific, FARO Technologies. Please tell us what BuildIT Construction is all about? The BuildIT Construction software leverages on FARO’s cutting-edge 3D metrology capability. FARO is to first to offer this fully integrated building lifecycle Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) management tool empowering construction professionals to continuously evaluate projects with real time comparisons against CAD designs using 3D scan data. The software from FARO uniquely enables laser scanner users to perform immediate, real-time build and verify analysis throughout the entire project, and facilitates a new level of cost management and operational efficiency. BuildIT Construction can be fully integrated with 3D data collected from FARO Focus Laser Scanners, optimised for the FARO TracerM Laser Projector for placement and layout of structural components and is compatible with the FARO Laser Tracker for prefabricated modular positioning. It can also be used seamlessly with other third-party hardware. Where do you see this software being used most? Application areas that will benefit most from the BuildIT Construction software include Architecture, Civil Engineering/Surveying, Construction, Facility Management, Historical Preservation, and Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP). AEC professionals will find the software useful for: ⁃ Verifying accuracy of scan data to design models ⁃ Detecting incorrect placement or missing features such as walls, columns, beams, pipes, etc. ⁃ Performing important measurements accurately and quickly ⁃ Inspecting construction for adherence to building standards ⁃ Verifying shifts and movements within structural performance over time with 4D analysis ⁃ Performing real time monitoring of adjacent structures throughout the project lifecycle Is there a lot of construction underway across ASEAN? Prospects for construction in the ASEAN region is generally bright. According to the Global Construction 2030 Report , the ASEAN construction market is expected to exceed US$1 trillion by 2030, with growth […]

Vricon Precision 3D Registration (P3DR) available

Vricon unveiled the next in a series of GEOINT solutions — Vricon Precision 3D Registration (P3DR) — at the year’s GEOINT 2018 Symposium in Tampa, Fla. Vricon P3DR is a software suite designed to automatically georegister imagery, regardless of collection platform, against the most accurate 3D geospatial foundation available, The Globe in 3D. P3DR can be implemented as a real-time processing workflow for imagery feeds without the need for GPS location, heading information, or ground control points. While we’ve always been able to perform georegistration of individual data sets using 3D models as an accurate foundation, Vricon P3DR takes this capability to a whole new level. Users now have multiple options for where and when they can automatically georegister their FMV or other imagery sources in real-time and at an enterprise scale. Precisely locating geospatial data from different sources is a persistent challenge for the geospatial community. Imagery data is collected at different times, on different platforms, and with different look angles, sensor characteristics, and raw pointing accuracies. High-off-nadir Full Motion Video (FMV) is particularly challenging, given the relatively narrow field of view, high resolution, and often poor initial pointing accuracy of the sensors. All of these complexities yield data sets that are significantly misaligned with each other and the real world. The alignment is often off by tens or even hundreds of meters. As a result, users are unable to automatically correlate multi-sensor data, making it difficult to fully leverage collection assets on critical targets. This also creates additional work for analysts, who spend hours trying to align various image sources. Vricon P3DR software — enabled by Vricon’s Globe in 3D — provides a way to quickly and accurately georegister data anywhere on the globe. Vricon P3DR provides critical accuracy enhancements to other ISR sources, enabling GEOINT data to be used to […]

Robot see, Robot do: Bots learn by watching human behaviour

Robots following coded instructions to complete a task? Old school. Robots learning to do things by watching how humans do it? That’s the future. Stanford’s Animesh Garg and Marynel Vázquez shared their research in a talk on “Generalisable Autonomy for Robotic Mobility and Manipulation” at the GPU Technology Conference recently. In lay terms, generalisable autonomy is the idea that a robot can observe human behaviour and learn to imitate it in a way that’s applicable to a variety of tasks and situations. What kinds of situations? Learning to cook by watching YouTube videos, for one. And figuring out how to cross a crowded room for another. Cooking 101 Garg, a postdoctoral researcher at the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab (CVGL), likes to cook. He also likes robots. But what he’s not so keen on is a future full of robots who can only cook one recipe each. While the present is increasingly full of robots that excel at single tasks, Garg is working toward what he calls “the dream of general-purpose robots.” The path to the dream may lie in neural task programming (NTP), a new approach to meta-learning. NTP leverages hierarchy and learns to program with a modular robot API to perform unseen tasks working from only a single test example. For instance, a robot chef would take a cooking video as input and use a hierarchical neural program to break the video data down into what Garg calls a structured representation of the task based on visual cues as well as temporal sequence. Instead of learning a single recipe that’s only good for making spaghetti with meatballs, the robot understands all the subroutines, or components, that make up the task. From there, the budding mechanical chef can apply skills like boiling water, frying meatballs and simmering sauce to other situations. Solving […]

Three game-changers for the manufacturing industry in 2018

Antony Bourne IoT being built into the product design, manufacturers adopting a more service-centric business model, and 3D-printing reaching the tipping point of realizing business benefits on a large scale. These are the three game-changing predictions that Antony Bourne, IFS Global Industry Director of Industrial and High-tech Manufacturing outlines for 2018. 1) By the end of 2018, over 50 percent of manufacturers will be building IoT technology into the design phase of their products. In 2018, IoT will take a decisive step forward in its evolution. If we once thought of IoT as a product’s nervous system, this year will see it grow from picking up signals at the periphery to being the brain of the product, constantly sending, receiving, growing and gathering information, from the center of the product throughout its lifetime, and in the process enabling new services and revenue streams. Manufacturing is undoubtedly heavily impacted by IoT today. According to Global Market Insights, IoT in the manufacturing market was valued at over US$ 20 billion in 2016 and will grow at more than 20 percent up to 2024. Current IoT investments that are unique to the manufacturing environment are taking place in three major initiatives: Smart manufacturing to increase production output, product quality, or operations and workforce safety as well as lower resource consumption Connected products to impact product performance, including collecting detailed information on products in the field, remote diagnostics and remote maintenance Connected supply chains to increase visibility and coordination in the supply chain, tracking assets or inventory for more efficient supply chain execution We will see IoT included as a part of the design process in all three of these IoT initiatives. Manufacturers are realizing that by engineering IoT technology into products and equipment already in the design process, you can monitor not only […]

BuildIT Construction can be fully integrated with 3D data

. Spokesperson: CHEW Beow Kwan, Product Marketing Associate Manager, Asia Pacific, FARO Technologies Please tell us what BuildIT Construction is all about? The BuildIT Construction software leverages on FARO’s cutting-edge 3D metrology capability. FARO is to first to offer this fully integrated building lifecycle Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) management tool empowering construction professionals to continuously evaluate projects with real time comparisons against CAD designs using 3D scan data. The software from FARO uniquely enables laser scanner users to perform immediate, real-time build and verify analysis throughout the entire project, and facilitates a new level of cost management and operational efficiency. BuildIT Construction can be fully integrated with 3D data collected from FARO Focus Laser Scanners, optimised for the FARO TracerM Laser Projector for placement and layout of structural components and is compatible with the FARO Laser Tracker for prefabricated modular positioning. It can also be used seamlessly with other third-party hardware. Where do you see this software being used most? Application areas that will benefit most from the BuildIT Construction software include Architecture, Civil Engineering/Surveying, Construction, Facility Management, Historical Preservation, and Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP). AEC professionals will find the software useful for: Verifying accuracy of scan data to design models Detecting incorrect placement or missing features such as walls, columns, beams, pipes, etc. Performing important measurements accurately and quickly Inspecting construction for adherence to building standards Verifying shifts and movements within structural performance over time with 4D analysis Performing real time monitoring of adjacent structures throughout the project lifecycle Is there a lot of construction underway across ASEAN? Prospects for construction in the ASEAN region is generally bright. According to the Global Construction 2030 Report[1], the ASEAN construction market is expected to exceed US$1 trillion by 2030, with growth predominantly driven […]

Countries with the highest density of robot workers

Data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) reveals that industrial automation is accelerating across the globe. In 2015, the average global robot density in manufacturing industries was 66 robot units per 10,000 employees. Just one year later, the number increased to 74 robot units. Europe is the reigning champ, sporting a robot density of 99 units per 10,000 workers. The next highest regions are the Americas and Asia, with 84 and 63 units, respectively. When it comes to overall growth rate, Asia tops the list. “Robot density is an excellent standard for comparison in order to take into account the differences in the automation degree of the manufacturing industry in various countries,” says Junji Tsuda, president of the IFR. “As a result of the high volume of robot installations in Asia in recent years, the region has the highest growth rate. Between 2010 and 2016, the average annual growth rate of robot density in Asia was nine percent, in the Americas seven percent, and in Europe five percent.” Breaking those numbers further down by countries, South Korea had the largest installation of industrial robots per 10,000 employees in 2016, reaching 631. South Korea’s electrical, electronics, and automotive sectors have all contributed to this high installation volume. Singapore comes in second, with 488 units. “About 90 percent of robots are installed in the electronics industry in Singapore,” according to the IFR. Germany (309 units) and Japan (303 units) ranked third and fourth, respectively. Check out the full IFR report here to learn more.

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