This episode of Manufacturing the Future is brought to you by EOS.

There are many ways to build parts with additive manufacturing technology, but regardless of the additive technology or build strategy, the basic rules of physics are the ultimate constraint, as in other forms of part making. Mechanical, thermal and sometimes chemical properties of materials are critical to consider in part design and build programming in additive manufacturing, and especially so when building with metals. 

Heat is a factor in any part making process using metals, but additive manufacturing adds new levels of complexity, as a layered build process. With complex, delicate, or high aspect ratio parts, supporting the structure is a major consideration for dimensionally stable parts. Some new technologies are now available to circumvent some of the classic constraints of part support and dimensional shift due to heat. 

Joining Jim Anderton to discuss these new technologies is Davy Orye, Team Manager, Additive Minds Consulting at EOS.

Learn more about how metal 3d printing using minimal to no supports can lead to optimized builds, reducing costs and timeframes.

Episode Transcript:

To see any graphics, images, and/or videos to which the transcript may be referring, please watch the above video. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Jim Anderton: Welcome to Manufacturing the Future. There are many ways to build parts with additive manufacturing technology, but regardless of the additive technology or build strategy, the basic rules of physics are the ultimate constraint, as in other forms of part making. Mechanical, thermal and sometimes chemical properties of materials are critical to consider in part design and build programming in additive manufacturing, and especially so when building with metals. Now, heat is a factor in any part making process, but additive manufacturing adds new levels of complexity as a layered build process. 

With complex, delicate or high aspect ratio parts, supporting the structure is a major consideration for dimensionally stable parts. There are new technologies now available to circumvent some of the classic constraints of part support and dimensional shift due to heat. Joining me to discuss this complex issue is Davy Orye, Team Manager Additive Minds Consulting with EOS. Davy has a decade of experience in the additive manufacturing industry and holds master’s degrees in both mechanical engineering and management from KU Leuven in Belgium. Davy, welcome to the program.

Davy Orye: Thank you for having me here.

Jim Anderton: Davy, there’s so much to talk about this issue and you have a unique layer of expertise, multi-dimensional expertise, in this subject going back to your research days, I understand. But could we define the basic parameters of this problem at this point? What are the difficulties that the part designer have to think about when they think about supporting a structure for an additive build?

Davy Orye: Indeed, it’s a very complex topic. And even before, let’s say, the manufacturing engineer starts, even in the design you already have to think about how am I going to orientate the part? As a result of that, where do I need to have support? And so that brings a lot of complexity to already even before you’re printing apart. And then when it comes to support structures, there’s also a lot of reasons why you have supports. So the first main reason is you’re very locally heating up in DMLS and powder bed fusion. You’re very locally heating up your part, your powder, with a laser and that heat has to go away. Typically, if you’re printing in the middle and the bulk of your part that goes through your part, through the base plate and so on, it’s dissipated really well. But on overhangs where there’s only small connections to the rest of your part, you typically add support structures.

Second reason for support is also typically you work with some kind of recoding system, and that recoding system can put a little bit of force on your part and then sometimes the supports are just simply there to make sure that that force doesn’t result into a small deformation of your part or bumping of your part. And then lastly, because of what I mentioned before, this local energy input that creates actually quite big terminal gradients into your part, which then in turn results into terminal deformations. And supports can help you either deal with those gradients and lower those gradients or to prevent the deformation which can happen.

Jim Anderton: That’s an interesting and complex process with something you mentioned here, which occurred to me, which I’m sure many part designers don’t consider, which is that the support of the part is more than just holding the part in the correct orientation during the build. You’re saying that there’s a heat flux, there’s a heat flow that goes through the supports that changes the local heating environment. When you’re thinking of as the part distorts during the build or perhaps after the build as it cools, how much does the designer have to consider heat flow through supports or lack of supports?

Davy Orye: That’s the problem. It’s a very complicated topic, this whole heat flux, that even, let’s say, the most up-to-date simulation software these days, they cannot even comprehend it or it takes literally days and months to simulate, basically, a complex geometry. So there’s only so much as a design engineer and a process engineer you can really understand, and there’s only so a human brain can understand. And so therefore, typically, you boil it down to certain design rules, saying, okay, overhangs of 40 degrees in the past typically needed support or certain sizes of parts. So the bigger the size of the part, the more stresses you have in the effort, the more deformations. And so then all of these complex thermodynamics basically are being boiled down into a combination of design rules and then the expertise and experience of application engineers.

Jim Anderton: In other part making technologies, for example, a weldment, fabricating an assembly, or perhaps even in some molding, die casting or injection molding applications to talk about plastic materials, there are strategies you can use to control this deformation. Strategies in the cooling for example or strategies in how long the part is held in the mold or fixtured during the cooling process. In the case of additive, it’s sort of a dynamic like a continuum. You have a layer of heat which kind of works its way through the part from beginning to the end. And so does this mean that the designer has to think differently about the way the part cools as well as how it’s built?

Davy Orye: Indeed. When you’re designing, of course, for example, if you think about complex structure, maybe a topology optimized structure, you don’t to think about, let’s say, the end product. But you have to think about all the intermediate stages when you’re building that part, layer by layer. And so things which in the end product are very stiff and wouldn’t deform even due to all the thermal stresses or since things are not connected during the build process, you have to take that into account as well when you are determining your orientation in your supporting strategy. So yes, it’s quite complicated from that point of view, and that’s why still, it’s a difficult technology to adapt or adopt where a lot of expertise is then being transferred also through my team, for example, to our customers in order to really help them understand the possibilities, limitations of the technology.

Jim Anderton: Traditionally, if you’re perhaps a mechanical engineer and you’re working with a different metallic material, things like the thermal properties of the material, modulus, these are sort of handbook solutions. So we know that if we’re going to make a part out of mild steel versus Inconel, for example, we can simply consult the database and know how the material properties will change. Is the same process true in additive manufacturing? Is it a matter of I can make something basically out of an aluminum alloy and just translate those parameters directly to, say, a super alloy, or do I have to change the way I designed the part?

Davy Orye: We can probably just about that question talk for hours, but to give you an idea of, let’s say, the differences. So if you think, for example, aluminum. Aluminum has a very high heat conductivity. So the energy, even though you put it in there, very locally, very quickly dissipates throughout the rest of your part. So thermal stresses also because of the lower melting temperature, thermal stresses are actually relatively lower in aluminums, at least, let’s say, the traditional 3D printed aluminums. If we go to high strength aluminum, that’s another topic again. But for example, aluminum solution 10 magnesium, their stresses are definitely not your problem. It’s more about heat management.

If we go then to Inconel, for example. There we very quickly get into overheating. We very quickly get into having burned away material and changing even the chemistry of it. And there we really have to manage the heat a lot better. On the complete other side of things here, for example, titanium, where you can put a lot of energy in there and titanium will behave okay. But the stresses and the willingness to deform are really high because you have exactly the opposite behavior of aluminum where you have a higher melting point and a very low heat connectivity. So that energy stays very locally and therefore we have huge, huge amount of stresses in titanium. So if you have a titanium part, especially when they’re large, you have to deal with those stresses. And as a designer, you have to know, okay, this will be very difficult for big parts from a stress point of view, where an aluminum, that’s absolutely not a problem. And then an Inconel, for example, I have to think about making sure that my overhangs are not burning away and having a good support strategy there.

Jim Anderton: Are residual stresses a factor with advanced part making with this technology? Is a post-processing, a heat treat, something that you see with metal additive?

Davy Orye: Yeah, almost always. And typically, dependent on the material, but typically it’s either just a stress release or combination of stress relief and then a further vent heat treatment to get the micro structure you really want. Because typically out of AM compared to other technologies, for example, casting with very fine micro structure, which comes with a lot of benefits because you have that combination of high strength and relatively high ductility. But you can change with a heat treatment where exactly you are on the trade-off between strength and ductility.

Jim Anderton: Additive is an interesting process. I think an example might be, say, an aluminum where if you’re used to casting an aluminum part, typically, especially die casting it, you could expect to see, of course, those elongated columnar grain structure near the surface next to the cool surface and more equiaxed grain structure in the middle, if you section these things. But in additive, in this case, you don’t have that differential between the core and the outside shell of the part down there. How does that change the way you think about the metallurgy of the part?

Davy Orye: To set expectations, I’m not a super expert on that side. However, I think one challenge, what we do have is, especially when we think also about coppers and so on, is that… And if you think about multi laser systems, so every four or even more lasers all working together on a part, you start to see some kind of gradient. You do start to see some kind of gradients in your part, because what happens at the very start of your build in DMLS, the powder, the chamber, everything is relatively cold and you have a certain process going in there.

But typically, at least, state of the art today is that process kind of remains relatively constant throughout the build. But everything is slowly starting to heat up, especially if you want to be high productive, which obviously we as EOS want to be. And then you start to see certain gradients also in your micro structure because of the heating up of that whole building platform. But it’s of course where some of our recent innovations come into play to manage that and keep also the micro structure and therefore mechanical properties and so on much more constant throughout the build.

Jim Anderton: Tell me about that management process because we know that the build process itself is software controlled, and the design process of course is designing the part and designing a strategy for controlling the laser, but it’s what can the design engineer, the manufacturing engineer, do about managing the heat or just managing the process on that higher level that you’re talking about? Is there something built into the equipment or built into the design software they can use?

Davy Orye: I’ll talk about first what we have today and what our customers are today successfully using, and then I’ll also talk about the very near future. So today what we have is basically a couple of things. For example, first of all, if vectors and scan pads are becoming very, very short. You have very thin mold applications, basically. These things tend to overheat because you don’t have a lot of material to suck away that heat. The laser is moving back and forth really quickly. And so there we have something called a minimum vector time, where basically you wait for a very short amount of time, we’re talking here about microseconds, in order to let things cool down a little bit. If you say, “Hey, we don’t want to wait,” then we have also something called a power reduction factor where based on the length of that vector, we can reduce the power and therefore manage the energy.

The second thing, what I was mentioning is if you go throughout the build and having a heating up, to control that, what we typically do today is, for example, set a minimum layer time. Because especially when layers are very quickly built on top of each other with four lasers, the layers will follow up on each other very quickly and things start to overheat. And you can say, even though the layer takes 10, 20 seconds to build, maybe wait every layer a few additional seconds to let things cool down. However, that’s the current stage today, but we don’t like that. We don’t like to wait because waiting is non-productive time and we want to make sure our customers can use the machine the fullest, and it doesn’t make sense if we have four lasers but we have to wait half of the time, then we could just as well have two lasers. And that’s where one of our newest innovations comes in, which is called smart fusion.

And smart fusion basically works based on our OT monitoring, like monitoring equipment. OT stands for optimal tomography, and it’s basically an easy word to say a thermal camera looking at your whole build plate and at your process. And it captures, basically, the energy of your process. And so it can see which regions of your part, your build, start to overheat. So it knows what the correct heat input should be. It knows basically what the correct color of your melt pool should be. And when things start to overheat, it will recognize that, and then the next layer will adapt your process accordingly. So in other words, if it sees overheating, it will slightly reduce the energy input to compensate for that. And it will, in that same compensate layer, will again look at it and will see if it compensated well and then continue that iteration of cycles in the next layer, which basically allows you to do a much better heat management than waiting, because here we’re not losing any time and we have, again, that high productive process which we all love.

Jim Anderton: Davy, is there a trade-off between optimal thermal management and build speed? Everyone of course wants to program to build the part in the shortest time possible.

Davy Orye: So for us, whenever we are developing solutions but it’s now for terminal management or for avoiding supports, which we started talking about before. For us, all of these solutions should start with, let’s say, the best possible business case and therefore also the most highly productive process. And so the cool thing about our technology is that even though we work based on real data, which is captured while we’re building, all of the calculations which need to happen actually happen during the recoding. So in other words, we don’t lose any time for these calculations, and our compensation basically is adjusting our laser power and therefore we also don’t slow down the process or put specific waiting times in there. So whatever you program as this is the speed I want to build at, the smart fusion software will basically build it at speed and manage the energy input through variations of laser power.

Jim Anderton: We’ve studiously avoided talking about applications, but there’s no way we can talk about an interesting part making technology without discussing applications. Everyone wants to make jet engine hot section blades with this technology. It’s sort of the marquee application, and you can do things that are more interesting than, say, investment casting in that application. But we at engineering.com are seeing a lot of excitement about two areas in particular. One is nuclear, small modular reactors, which are some of the hottest energy technology and very topical now in Europe and in the rest of world, of course, with political considerations.

And the other is electric vertical takeoff and landing. The idea of passenger carrying drone technology, multiple rotors, pilot autonomously. Both those have unique requirements. The EVTOL need electric motors that are very light, but of course will require some advanced technologies of cobalt alloys, very interesting things. And of course nuclear, naturally, of course that’s a high radiation environment. That has its own challenges at that point. Do you see this type of metal additive, tightly controlled metal additive technology you’re talking about being something which is going to be embraced quickly by those two sectors?

Davy Orye: Traditionally, we had the aerospace of course, and space is also definitely still a big market for us, a big booming market at the moment, especially in the US. And the medical where I have been doing a lot of things, you can also see that in my background. There’s some hip stands. But I do see indeed, in nuclear particularly… So I’m not involved in everything, of course, at EOS, but in nuclear particularly, I see that there’s a lot of interest. There’s a lot of interesting projects here at EOS as well. We’re also developing some new materials specifically for that industry. For example, around Zirconium, I understood that there is a lot of applications there. Also, Tungsten is one of the strengths of EOS, and there’s also quite a bit of applications there. So definitely we see that.

And then also, which I think to some extent is on line with what you were saying is in the e-mobility, as we call it here at EOS. We do see a lot of applications. For example, we’re quite front runners in printing copper, although at Formnext I learned that our competition is also starting to catch up there. But we see a lot of copper applications in e-mobility for heat management, also for then the electrical motors and so on. These are definitely growing strategic markets for us.

Jim Anderton: Davy, final question. Looking forward to the future, we hear a lot about generative design, the application of AI to the engineering process, digital twin, model-based systems engineering. When we integrate metal additive manufacturing into that world, into that paradigm, are we going to look at an automated future, do you think, where a designer designs a part basically and the machine says, “This part must be made additively, and I’ve taken care of it. It’s programmed. Parameters are in place. Go.” And you press the green button and walk away. Is that the future?

Davy Orye: I hope it is. There’s, of course, still some steps to be done there. Let’s say, as EOS, we’re setting ourselves up for that future. So as EOS, we understand, let’s say, additive manufacturing is one of the technologies out of many and you have the best applications if you can combine many manufacturing technologies together where it makes sense. And from a pure software point of view, we make sure that our software can talk to other software, is fully integrable, that you can make your digital twin, that all our sensor data and so on is standardized. So also from a software point of view, really setting ourselves up to be perfectly fit into the factories of the future. Because we understand that that’s where things are going and that additive manufacturing plays a very important role in that flexibility or to enable that flexibility. So I’m very excited to see where that all ends up.

Jim Anderton: An exciting future. Davy Orye, EOS, thanks for joining me on the program.

Davy Orye: Thanks for having me once again.

* * * 

Learn more about how metal 3d printing using minimal to no supports can lead to optimized builds, reducing costs and timeframes.

The post Advanced Metal Additive Means Support-Free appeared first on Engineering.com.

Transportation has been the focus of environmental regulation since the 1960s, and the automotive industry has responded with a family of technologies that has made internal combustion engines several orders of magnitude cleaner that the vehicles of half a century ago. 

Cars and trucks however, are only part of the power story. The off-highway industry has faced the same evolving need for clean, sustainable machines that operate with higher levels of productivity at low cost. It’s a seemingly conflicting requirement: more with less. 

But there are multiple advanced technologies in use and under development in the off-highway sector that are delivering clean power with high productivity and safety. Joining engineering.com’s Jim Anderton to discuss these advanced technologies are Poclain Hydraulics’ Matt Christensen, Vice President of Sales and Application Engineering at Poclain Hydrolics, and Sara Feuling, Senior Director, Construction from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM).

Attend IFPE 2023 March 14-18, 2023 in Las Vegas. Use promo code DIG20 to save 20% off registration.

This episode of Manufacturing the Future is brought to you by AEM.

Episode Transcript:

To see any graphics, images, and/or videos to which the transcript may be referring, please watch the above video. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Jim Anderton: Hello everyone. And welcome to Manufacturing the Future.Transportation has been the focus of environmental regulation since the 1960s, and the automotive industry has responded with a family of technologies that’s made internal combustion engines several orders of magnitude cleaner than the vehicles of half a century ago. Cars and trucks, however, only part of the power story. The off-highway industry has faced the same evolving need for clean, sustainable machines that operate with higher levels of productivity at lower cost.

Now, it’s a seemingly conflicting requirement. Do more with less. But there are multiple advanced technologies in use and under development in the off-highway sector that are delivering clean power with high productivity and safety. Joining me to discuss the evolving landscape are Poclain Hydraulics’, Matt Christensen, and Sara Feuling from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.

Matt is an engineer and a 24-year veteran of the fluid power industry with engineering roles with Concentric, Komax, Danfoss, and now Poclain Hydraulics. He holds a bachelor of science degree from Iowa State and an MBA from Northern Illinois University.

Sara Feuling has been the senior director of construction with the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, the AEM, since 2018, and is the go-to industry resource for AEM within the construction equipment sector. Prior to joining the AEM, Sara spent nearly 10 years with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation in heavy highway construction and project management. Sara holds a bachelor’s degree in civil structural engineering and a master’s degree in civil engineering, both from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Wisconsin. Matt and Sara, welcome to the show.

But for greenhouse gases, the secret to greenhouse gases appears to be, from a technical standpoint, burning less fuel. Now, interesting in the off-highway industry, you think about starting with Ag in the 1930s, I mean there were published tractor tests which explored fuel efficiency as a fundamental feature of advanced design even way back, even before World War II. So it seems like the off-highway industry has been conscious of the fact that you’ve got to minimize fuel burn and with the knock on effect of minimizing emissions forever.

I mean, Sara, inputs such as fuel consumption, in the construction market, you’re a civil engineer at this point. Fuel is expensive. Has it always been important? Is it more important now? What’s the state?

Sara Feuling: I would definitely say it’s always been important. Like you mentioned, Jim, these regulations have been in place for decades, but now we have this technology. We have an incredible amount of data coming from these machines that our contractors, project owners, they’re beginning to use that data, including that fuel burn like you mentioned, that allows them to more accurately scope and bid projects, but then also really measure the impact of their work. That regulation really does drive that transformation and construction and where we’re definitely seeing that in the construction market.

Jim Anderton: Matt, electrification is on everyone’s lips, everyone’s talking about it in the transportation industry. Everything is about going electric to get off fossil fuels. From an engineering perspective, I look at it and say, wow. I mean, diesel engines, internal combustion engine in general, that is a very compact way to generate a lot of very useful practical power. Let’s talk about electrification a little bit. Where do we stand in the electrification of off-highway equipment, do you feel?

Matt Christensen: Well, there’s definitely lots of technologies that have emerged in development, and what you stated is exactly right. The power density of the traditional fossil fuels and a combustion engine is hard to match when you have the same space claim or the same amount of space for an electric solution. So we’re in a situation where there’s a spectrum or a transition that has to occur. We’re going to have to use some of our fossil fuels in the best way possible, the most efficient way possible, while we develop some of these other technologies as we move from traditional hydraulic architectures to electro hydraulic vehicles and even fully electric platforms.

The key is that, again, it comes back to power density and energy storage. The vehicles are different, the duty cycles are different, and the amount of power that’s required is different. And so when we look at fundamentally designing new vehicles to incorporate this new technology, in some cases it’s going to be as simple as replacing an engine and energy storage with some electric motors and an energy storage solution, but at most it could entail a complete rethinking or redesign of the chassis to accommodate this very different architecture and energy storage.

Jim Anderton: Yeah, and it’s interesting you mentioned it. We’ve seen, for example, hydraulic motors used for some low speed motor power applications, and it intuitively, from an engineering perspective, it looks like heck of an attractive way to do it. Hub motors certainly could solve a lot of problems because it’s easier to route hydraulic lines, for example, than differential and axles. But nonetheless, there’s most of the larger equipment we see still operates basically with a direct mechanical drive to mode of power in a separate hydraulic power unit to drive the rest of the machine’s functions.

The post Off Highway Equipment Shifts to Electromobility appeared first on Engineering.com.

Artificial intelligence and autonomous operation are the most widely anticipated technologies in the on-road transportation sector, and with self-driving cars carrying paying passengers in several cities around the world, the promise is finally becoming reality.  

The prime movers in the global economy however are the machines that build infrastructure and drive agriculture, and in the off-highway space, similar advanced technologies are revolutionizing the way earth is moved and crops are grown.

However, the challenge is much more considerable in the off-highway space. Tunneling, excavating, grading, tilling, and seeding are using GPS and laser guided systems to achieve unprecedented levels of accuracy and precision. What will the future look like for the off-highway equipment industry? How will advancements in hydraulic systems help achieve this future?

Jim Anderton discusses the future of off-highway equipment with Sara Feuling, Senior Director, Construction at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) and Ben Holter, Director of Automation Systems for Husco.

Episode Transcript:

To see any graphics, images, and/or videos to which the transcript may be referring, please watch the above video. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Jim Anderton: Hello everyone. And welcome to Manufacturing the Future. The transportation industry is undergoing a revolution driven by technology, such as battery electric drive, autonomous driving, and enabling technologies such as AI in the internet of things. But not everything that moves operates on roads. Agriculture and construction are cornerstones of the economy and that sector has enjoyed the same kind of technological revolution that’s change in the automotive and aviation industries. In many cases, the demands are actually higher productivity, efficiency, safety, they’re all important, and now environmental factors are entering the picture. Now, how is industry responding to this technological challenge? Joining me are Sara Feuling, Senior Director Construction at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers and Ben Holter, Director of Automation Systems for Husco. Sara holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and Ben holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and a master’s science degree from Northwestern University in predictive analytics. Sara and Ben, welcome to the show and I’m going to dive straight in because there’s so much to talk about.

Autonomous vehicles, self-driving, everyone’s talking about it. It’s the hottest technology in the automotive industry today, and multiple companies are working on it. The trucking industry they’re addressing labor shortages by adding sort of higher levels of technology, try and take the person out self-driving it’s been talked about with various levels of success. There’s just a ton of tech that is suddenly being adopted from what used to be sort of the software realm and we’re jamming into things that traditionally were thought of as mechanical systems down there. What about OTR equipment? Will that self-driving loader greater backhoe, is that going to change everything? Are you going to get rid of the operator? Basically is someone from a beach and Cancun going to be going to be digging that trench? How about it, Sara? I’ll start with you.

Sara Feuling: Those are all great points, Jim. We’re seeing a lot in the on-road space and development and technology, and like you said, how all these pieces come together. We’ve seen a little bit of it already in mining, right? Where those more controlled operations are happening and that autonomy space is a little more fluid. But from an off-road perspective, we’re absolutely bridging that gap now between what is typically heavy equipment, right? And technology. Part of it is just where we’ve come as an industry, right? But it’s also part of that labor shortage is also a piece of it where we are able to use this technology to take what was a good operator and turn that person into a great operator.

There are automated features, machine control, grade control, all of those things that are really helping our operators in the field do more and do it better. They’re eliminating rework and reducing the need for additional grade checks. And that’s all of those advancements that we’ve seen in GPS, GNSS technology all kind of coming together. And we’ll see where that takes us in the future. We definitely have a bright future ahead of us as we work through these things.

Jim Anderton: Sara, you’re an expert in civil engineering and there’s something I think that non-civil engineers have pondered. I certainly have, which is what defines accuracy and precision in your world compared to a world, for example, of machine tools or even 3D printing? I think there’s sometimes a sense out there that, well, I work to tolerances of thousands of an inch and you’re digging a tunnel. So, close enough is good enough. Just how tough is it to do those tasks?

Sara Feuling: We’ll use something as simple as a grading operation, right? Tolerance is typically less than a 10th of a foot. So, that’s an inch and a quarter, which sounds pretty big when you’re relating it to something that’s talking millimeters, right? But that inch and a quarter really adds up. And again, we rely on our strong experienced operators to get to that level of accuracy. But now when we combine that with the GPS and GNSS technology in grade control, we’re able to bring that down to hundreds of feet. So, we’re talking quarter inches and that in itself really kind of drives those efficiencies. You talked about that productivity as well as it all ends up to a dollar at the end of the day, right? So, if we’re going to take that inch and a half inch, inch and a quarter over a 12 foot lane, every mile, we’re almost at 240 cubic yards of material. So, now you’re going to make that up in your pavement, you’re looking at $35,000.

Not to the additional placement time, as well as the additional staff and work that requires. So, that accuracy that you talked about really adds up when you’re able to use something like a grade control that’s going to get you within those several hundredths of a foot versus a 10th of a foot. And now you’re talking dozens of yards versus hundreds of yards.

Jim Anderton: Sara, do you still measure efficiency the same way that you used to in this industry? I mean, there’s a used to be a sense of, I know what my operating cost per hour are, basically I’ve got a sense of how long it’s going to take basically to sort of grade for that interstate. And I get a sense that time and cost overruns were fairly common, they still are. Is it tighter today?

Sara Feuling: I think definitely a lot of our contractors are getting smart. They’re using the technology to their advantage, right? And they’re finding those nuances, those productivity gains, those efficiency gains using some of the other tools, the software tools that are out there and available in the industry to really balance out and hammer out what those bid prices are, what that time is going to take, what that cost is going to take and in their operations are finding ways to get it done better and faster, which adds up to a dollar amount at the end of the day.

Jim Anderton: Ben, Sara talked about the idea of this advanced technology actually making a better operator or sort of a, of a super operator, if you will using sort of these devices. But equipment operators, they have specific tasks to perform in maneuvering vehicles and they have to operate multiple controls, all of us who’ve tried the incredibly complex technique of say operating even a backhoe are concerned. But good operators have an intuitive feel for things like rock and soil conditions, traction and gradient, breakout force, weight, they can sort of feel these things intuitively. Will future automation systems control these multiple factors in the way that human operators do? Do you have to put sensor systems in and then intelligent systems that operate the same way that a really good operator does when he just has an intuitive sense of what the critical lean angle is of the machine or what the breakout force is? Is it easy? Is it hard?

Ben Holter: Great question. Talking about the operator, an operator, a person is an amazing machine. It’s really difficult to understand what’s all going in our brain and how it operates. So, trying to put all of that into a control system is even more difficult. Automotive is running the same problems. How does machine vision work? How do you tell if it’s a person or if it’s a rock? If you can hit it, if you can dig it, or if it’s dangerous? All of those things happen in the operator’s brain instantly. And we know if it’s right or wrong. It’s really difficult to program and really difficult to understand. So, even breaking down just how to get back to that grade that Sara talked about; she talked about a 10th of a foot accuracy, that 10th of a foot at the bucket tip. If we talk about a 20-ton style excavator, that’s on the side of the road, that 10th of a foot accuracy at the bucket tip equates back down to a one millimeter accuracy on the cylinder position.

That one millimeter accuracy is talking about the hydraulic compliance, the cylinder compliance, the hose compliance, even the structure compliance. If any of those stretch more than one millimeter or compressed more than one millimeter, now you’re off by that one 10th of a foot. So, we think about how does a person do that? That’s amazing. A person can control something that’s that compliant to one millimeter. It’s all about muscle memory. It’s all about time in the seat and understanding how that works. We have amazing machine learning algorithms in our head that are constantly working that we don’t even think about. And so, bringing that back down to how does a control system make that work? One millimeter on a cylinder, we’re talking one milliamp on a control system to control a hydraulic control valve. That one milliamp is less than the parasitic of your phone charger sitting on the side of your bed right now. 

So we think about these numbers and it just continues to drop orders of magnitude more and more tight, harder, and harder to achieve, but an operator’s doing that every day. And so the difficulty we have as hydraulic manufacturers, as OEMs, as construction companies is how do we make something that maybe takes 10 or 20 or 30 years for an operator to get good at? How do we make that good day one? Because nobody’s going to go buy an automated machine that it works like a two year old’s driving it. Everybody wants to buy and operated an automated machine that operates as good as their 40 year experienced veteran today, day one. Because they’ve got the labor shortage, they want remote operation, they want all of these things that we have today with experienced operators. They want it a control system.

And so with the convergence of technology, GPS getting better, sensors getting better, more rugged for our industry. Dust, light vibration so much harsher in the construction industry that convergence of technology making it possible is now putting the onus on us hydraulic manufacturers and other controls manufacturers to make this possible. We are now able to do it and we now just have to prove that it’s possible. And so really diving down into all the control systems, all the transfer functions of how each system needs to work and how tightly controlled each system needs to be is really the beginning of us making this work.

And we’re starting to see in these really complex machines like excavators, starting to see this become more and more of a thing. We talk about automation, not autonomy, because the first step towards autonomy is automation. We need to automate some bits, whether it’s grade or whether it’s e- fencing. You talked about how we make the operators better. How can we do that? Well, make it so that if they’re tired or not thinking that they can’t swing into a road or they can’t dig into a pipe.

And so if we have that information in the site plan, and we can program that into the machine, now we can make that happen. We can stop the operation of the excavator digging a pipe and having to move away everybody because there’s a gas leak. But that all starts with electro hydraulics. A lot of machines don’t even have electro hydraulics and you can’t even plug in a control system to make that happen. And so we’re incrementally taking steps forward in our industry to make all of this possible. And it’s really an exciting time in our industry because all of this is becoming very possible and starting to show in the end market.

Jim Anderton: Ben you mentioned really the brilliance of the human body and how amazing it is that we have those proprioceptors and that incredible feedback system that lets us operate with that remarkable precision and touchdown. If you are going to duplicate that or enhance that with the systems you’re developing at this point, what is your feedback system? What are you doing on the sensor side there? Is this radar, LIDAR, is this force sensing? Is this something you can detect, for example, back at the hydraulic cylinder? Or is this something that you need to do perhaps at the bucket or the end effector end? How do you even start this process?

Ben Holter: It’s where do you start? Really, where you have to start is understanding that the operator today could look and see that grade has met, where it was supposed to meet. The GPS may tell it, or a surveyor may put a stake in the ground and tell the operator where the bucket tip is versus where it’s supposed to be. So the first thing we need is sensors and those sensors have made huge strides and improvement in ruggedness and in accuracy. So now we’re able to access satellites, access IMUs, inertial measurement systems on these machines to every 10 milliseconds or even faster in some cases, know where that bucket tip is and know where it is with relation to where it’s supposed to be. So the first place we have to start is that. And tho that technology is finally becoming mature enough where it is rugged and we can rely it day after day, 24 hours a day, and start using those systems. To get where we’re understanding things like loads, or soil conditions, or even obstacles such as people walking around.

We’re still looking for advancements in sensors and reliability. Let’s say there’s 10 functions on a machine, if we add 20 sensors, one for each extended retract of a cylinder right at left of a motor. Now we’ve got 20 extra potential failure modes that could take down a system. Those extra potential failure modes could take down a machine, which could be on a path that’s really important and could stop production of something for who knows how long, depending on how long it takes to get that machine back up and running or replace that sensor. So the more sensors we add, the more concern the operator’s going to be for uptime.

And so we’re always weighing what’s the need of the sensor versus, the value of the sensor, versus what happens if the sensor goes wrong. So from a performance and accuracy of productivity and efficiency standpoint, then on top of that, a functional safety standpoint, we’re always trying to weigh how many sensors do we add? Versus what does it give us? Versus what could go wrong in that state? And it’s different for every customer, it’s different for every system. And we’re still trying to figure out what’s the best solution. And it’s going to continue to change as technology continues to advance the robustness, the acceptance of sensors, and the ability and the cost of sensors to put all of those on.

Jim Anderton: There used to be, it’s anecdotally, or given a thought that junior operators, less experienced operators, are hard on equipment. And we know you could shock load hydraulic systems and create all sorts of problems back in the day when you were basically using, say fixed displacement, fixed pressure pumps, and basically with a blow off valve, and you’re using accumulator to try and damp some of those, those shock loads. And a lot of things can happen, unexpected things can happen. And so in some ways you could define a great operator is one of those not only efficient, but also was easy on the machinery. We’re looking at a world now where we may be bringing a lot more inexperienced people into the industry because of labor shortages at this point and getting them up to speed faster. Is this control technology, this kind of sensor technology, does that work into that factor too? Can that paper over some of the inexperience of an operator maybe even help them get better? Do you think?

Ben Holter: Yeah, it’s a really exciting question because we’re at a point right now where as electro hydraulics, as control systems on these large construction machines become more accepted, there are today in the automotive industry. We’re able to add more sensors and add more controls to, like you said, help out this younger operators. But what that also does, which is really exciting from the hydraulic valve manufacturing design standpoint, is now we can start simplifying our hydraulic systems. The last six decades, we’ve continued to improve performance, improve efficiency, and improve controllability and safety by adding widgets because we didn’t have a software control system that we could modify or change controls. It was a physical system. And so the only way to make it better is to add complexity, add extra widgets, to do the things that our customers are looking for.

Now that we can put software into this mix, we can start making our hydraulics simpler hydraulics, which means less failure points. But then we can give the same operation, the same functionality, productivity, efficiency that we’re getting without all of those extra bits, all of those extra failure points. And then furthermore, we can modify how the valve feels depending on the operator. So we can put in a inexperienced operator mode that’s maybe softer, more filtered, maybe lowered speeds. However, the end user or however, the owner.

However, the end user, however, the owner of the machine wants the operator act because in the end, if the operator’s ruining the machine for the owner, they have to pay for it. And so we’re able to do things depending on operator, depending on region, depending on what the machine’s doing with the touch of a button, which has never been possibly before, which is what’s making this so exciting for us in and beyond just automation.

Jim Anderton: Sara, in civil engineering, particularly big projects, we’re seeing a revolution in the way some of these projects are designed and built. Now we’re looking at things like undersea tunnels, very, very deep construction, skyscrapers, tall construction that involve foundation work in areas that were previously be considered completely unsuitable. In fact, new materials, new hybrid materials, concretes, not far from where I’m, we’re talking about this, a new office towers going up, and it’s about 12 stories it’s made of wood of laminated wood, which is something which I never thought I would see in my life at all. Are new generations of machines going to be necessary in lockstep with this new pool of labor coming in to even build some of these projects. I mean, back in the day, if you bought a [Caterpillar] D9, it was expensive and you kept it on the job for 30 years you wore it out and you replaced it when you had to do, you have to now go through a different equipment cycle now based on its capability, rather than its life expectancy.

Sara Feuling: I don’t know that it’s necessarily a different life cycle, but there are those advancements to those machines. Let’s take that D nine that you mentioned, right? You could have bought it 30 years ago, but all of our OEMs and our, and our technology providers and our hydraulic manufacturers are now making a lot of aftermarket retrofits, right? That you can bring your machine along with this advance in technology and these new operations, like you mentioned, there’s different alternative materials, different construction methods, kind of changing how things are done, but it’s not necessarily going to change your machine unless you need it to or want it to. So that’s, again, the beauty of what of all our OEMs and our component suppliers are doing is they’re giving end users and these contractors, the ability to build the machine that they need to best do their job. Whatever it is, right?

There’s a lot of options out there. These technologies, and a lot of these control points that Ben was referencing, that all plays into what those OEMs are putting out for their big machine. And then the contractor, the end user can absolutely customize that. So obviously stuff that’s coming off new, off the line has these things integrated, right? There’s a lot of integral technology, which is great and wonderful to see, especially when we know this younger generation coming into the industry, they’re used to computers, they’re used to touch screens. They know what widget means, right? If you go back to some of them are experienced operators, those that have been in the industry for a while, when you’re you’re now instead of a couple controls, you’ve got touch screen. This younger generation is going to be able to just naturally get in line with that. Where I actually went up to the local here in Wisconsin, the operators union training center, and got to operate machine control grade control system. And you’re still on the controls and the levers, but I got to sit in the seat and touch what was like an iPad and determine which mode I wanted it on, right? To make it easier for me, a very, very inexperienced operator to figure out how to use this technology, to do what it was that they wanted that wanted us to accomplish that day.

So I definitely do think there’s, there’s great opportunity for equipment, both new and existing to really align with where the future of construction is going.

Jim Anderton: So you mentioned specialty equipment. And that’s a trend which we have noticed here at Engineering.com was in the past, if you were doing pipeline work for example, you used a basic track laying tractor chassis, and then you might have added a boom, for example, something simple as that. You might have added a grappler in place of a shovel, relatively simple sort of aftermarket sort of add-ons. Now we’re seeing a whole generation of equipment now, which is incredibly specialized. Most recent. What I saw was actually a pavement milling machinery. Unusual stuff that does very, very special jobs, highly specialized in clearly not based as a modification of a simple existing chassis. Although clearly the underpinnings may come from a deer or a cat, or one of the OEMs at this point. Is that the future? Are we going to see a world in which there are smaller OEMs that are making very specialized equipment for a very small market just to get that last bit of productivity?

Sara Feuling: Yeah, absolutely. I think what we’ve seen a lot of actually is a lot of it is contractor driven. Where there are contractors who are very, very specialized and they rep they do on repetitive type of a specialized work and they have taken it on themselves to retrofit some sort of equipment or build their own attachment that does what two or three different attachments did previously. We are highlighting a lot of that. And you’ll see, in CONEXPO CON/AGG 2023, we’ve got a lot of those features highlighted from an OEM perspective that you see these, these new solutions, right? They sound very simple. It’s a common everyday problem, but it helps bring down the work, right, and the load and really specialized solutions to account for all those things.

Along with that, what Ben was mentioning and all those different sensors and all this hydraulic and where that’s all moving, that’s all going to be at IFPE as well. So within the industry itself, we are really highlighting some of those things, trying to draw attention to not only the industry, but to those smaller manufacturers, right? That, that really have a game changer, really have some stuff that’s going to change the future of the industry and give them an opportunity to share that on a wider scale.

Ben Holter: And following up with Sara there, she talked about auxiliary and attachments. I think agriculture has done a great job. You have one power plant, you’ve got the tractor buy a ton of attachments and do what you need. We’re starting to see that in our industry a lot more, especially at the supply side where ox, auxiliary attachments, auxiliary sections used to be just an add-on that you just needed to do a certain flow rate. Now, auxiliaries are becoming some of the most deluxe systems that we’re selling the deluxe sections, because they have to have pressure control, flow control, a damping on them, zero back pressure for hammers. And, and we’re putting a lot of the deluxe nest in those to handle all of the different auxiliary requirements that are being driven by end users that have this new attachment or this new attachment that never thought about before to get more, use more productivity, more uptime of a machine that’s on a site rather than bringing in specialized machines for pipeline.

Now, like you said, you add an attachment to make it a bite layer. And that’s really exciting too, because then you talk about software and what you can do with software. Now you talk about different pressures, different flow rates, rather than somebody having to go out and change a relief valve setting, or worry about blowing up their attachment, because it wasn’t rated for that pressure. We can do that at, at, at a touch of a button to the hydraulic valve to change that setting and say, oh, I’ve now got a hammer or a grapple or a brush cutter. And we can set that all automatically to again, update productivity and also make it easier for new operators. So they don’t have to worry about remembering to change relief valve setting before they blow up that brush cutter. So again, more opportunities for us to meet the market needs with hydraulic improvements that we’ve been waiting for to come.

Jim Anderton: Sara and Ben, do young engineering grads, students, perhaps the public at large. Are they aware of how much technology is in this industry? I think there’s a conception out there that a bulldozer’s a bulldozer it’s been the same for half a century. I mean, we’re, you’re talking about cutting edge technology here is there a perception that it’s there? Sara? How about you?

Sara Feuling: I definitely think it’s not as out there as we would like it to be. Where I think you’re exactly right, Jim, you look at a piece of machinery and you’re like, “Ah, it’s heavy machinery. It’s dirty, it’s basic, it’s rudimentary,” right? And it is so not. So we are, I think, as an industry, trying to help change that narrative, change that perception, tell that story. To say, “Look at all this technology and all these different things that are within our industries.” 

For example, if we’re talking about all this software that goes into running these machines, somebody going to college right now, thinking they want to be a software engineer, isn’t considering a career in construction, but they could be, and they should be. None of these things are possible without all of that technology and those typically non-construction or manufacturing roles. We are really broadening and widening that net of what is our future workforce pipeline. So as an association, as AEM, that is part of our workforce initiative, to help tell those stories, to tell some of these fun, exciting things that we’re doing in this industry with technology to help draw the next generation and to change that perception.

Jim Anderton: Ben, your education could have led you to Silicon Valley.

Ben Holter: Yeah.

Jim Anderton: And how much fun are you having in this industry? This industry’s clearly a place where high tech lives.

Ben Holter: It’s so exciting. We just finished deploying and getting customer approval on a 10-function valve. And so you think about 10 functions, I’ve got one power plant that’s controlling the power to 10 functions. And you think about the control system and how you control that. You’ve got 10 degrees of freedom off one power plant, all at different pressures, all at different forces that an operator expects to work harmoniously. And you don’t think about how hard that is, because it’s worked in the past hydromechanically, but when you put it into software and try and, again, make the hydromechanics a little bit more simple, it’s a really complex situation.

It’s more than just a gas pedal and a steering wheel, not to detriment anything that the other industries are doing, but it’s an amazing problem. It’s really exciting and really hard. It’s all non-linear, it’s all Bernoulli’s Equations 10 times. And you think, well, hydraulics are going away, but then you think that that bucket cylinder, that’s 20 feet out on a big excavator, that needs a hundred kilowatts to work. Imagine putting a hundred kilowatt electric motor diesel engine at the bucket cylinder to make that a distributed electronic system. You need a motor to get that power out and the power density of hydraulics are just so good and the robustness of hydraulics that it’s going to be around for a while.
And so we’re solving really exciting, hard problems in an industry that’s being disrupted in an exciting way for us to solve global socioeconomic and geopolitical problems along the way. So it couldn’t be more exciting and yeah, love what AM’s doing to help make this initiative, to get people into this industry because hydraulics aren’t the dirty, messy hydraulics you thought about 20 years ago. If you take a tour of our manufacturing plant, if you see us at FP, it’s very clean, it’s automated. Our valves are being manufactured in automated way, similar to what automotive is doing and what their industry’s driven. So it’s new, it’s exciting, it’s clean, and it’s really hard problems that are, again, I’ll just keep saying it: exciting.

Jim Anderton: There’s just so much to talk about, we could do this for hours. I hope we get a chance to do more of this, but just to wrap this up or give a cap on this whole initial shallow dive that we’ve made in this topic down here, we’re looking at a world now where the demographic challenges are real. This isn’t a short-term blip where we just have to wait five years, we’ll have another generation of skilled operators that will pop up out the woodwork. At the same time, the demands of the civil engineering, Sara, as you’re noting, are much higher. We got to dig deeper, we got to do it cheaper, faster, new materials, all sorts of new factors at the same time. Look forward please. 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now basically, is this going to be the Jetsons? Are we going to have technology we don’t even realize today? Or will this be something where this is recognizable but much different? Sara, I’ll start with you.

Sara Feuling: I think that’s a very interesting question, Jim, because you can look at it a couple of different ways, especially on the construction side. We’re an industry typically very slow to change. We’ve done what we’ve done and we’ve done it well for years, but if you look at where we’ve come in the last 20 years and where we could potentially go, I like to always compare it to music.
Okay, so those of us that were born in the eighties, in my lifetime, from middle school, through high school, I went from a cassette to a CD, to an iPad, to my phone, in a 10 year window. Now extrapolate that and where the industry could be from here, right? We’ve got Tesla talking about being on Mars in 30 years, right? What are we going to be doing here?

So I think absolutely, there is the potential for 10 years from now, these advancements. And as that’s proven, I think that’s another thing that’s going to – I think Ben mentioned it earlier, it needs to work and it needs to be a proven solution and a proven technology. And once the industry starts seeing that these things do work and they do the job well, I think at that point we’ll absolutely see, 10, 20 years from now, these things will extrapolate. Tie that into these automated features that we’ve got, right? Everything we’ve talked about is automated, we’re not quite too autonomy with any of these things, but this is step number one to get us to that potentially autonomous future. Pulling out some of those operators, pulling out some of the man hours on site, and being able to do this with the technology we have available.

So I think absolutely, it’s very exciting to see where this could go and it could look very similar, but it also could look completely different. And that’s for the industry to really help us drive towards that and realize what that shared future could be.

Jim Anderton: Ben, you’ll be engineering that future. What do you think it’ll look like?

Ben Holter: Yeah, putting machines and digging – putting them on Mars will be interesting – but we’ll figure out a solution to do it. So that I think is what is cool about this industry, is that we need to be there to make sure that we’re building houses, building roads, building infrastructure here, wherever it might be, speaking 40 years out. And we’re going to continue to be more productive with it. And more safe with it. All the things we’re doing are making people more safe, machines more safe, more productive, more efficient. And so the opportunities of where we can go in even 10 years are crazy to think about because there is just so much opportunity and with the convergence of all of the sensors and computing power and algorithms, really the opportunity is endless of what can our end users imagine as possible, and then we’ll figure out a way to solve it. And that’s what’s exciting.

Jim Anderton: Sara Feuling, Association of Equipment Manufacturers; Ben Holter, Husco, thanks for joining me on the show. 

Join us March 14-18 in Las Vegas at IFPE 2023. Use promo code DIG20 to save 20% off registration!

The post Off-Highway Equipment, High Technology appeared first on Engineering.com.

This episode of Manufacturing the Future is brought to you by EOS.

Metal additive manufacturing is perhaps the ultimate expression of 3D printing. The ability to add incredible complexity at low cost and make cost-effective parts in lot sizes as low as one, make it both ideal and frequently, the only solution for high-performance applications. To get up to speed on metal 3D however requires preparation and knowledge, like any new manufacturing process. That knowledge base is accessible to all manufacturing professionals, but a sensible, stepwise approach to the problem yields maximum results in the shortest possible time. 

Two experts from EOS, Dr. Ankit Saharan, Senior Manager for Metals Technology and Vincenzo Abbatiello, design and simulation application engineer, summarize the 10 key steps that engineering professionals should follow for a successful, trouble-free introduction to metal additive manufacturing. 

For more information on an additive manufacturing starter kit, visit EOS.

The post Metal 3D Printing Success Starts Here appeared first on Engineering.com.

Episode Summary:

Electrical power generation and distribution is changing in America, and around the world. With the movement to carbon free electricity generation, primarily by solar and wind systems supplemented by new nuclear, the way electricity is made is changing rapidly. Just as important however, is the need to revamp the way electricity is distributed, especially as electric vehicles dominate the transportation sector in the next 20 years. 

While generation gets most of the media attention, the need for robust and reliable distribution infrastructure was made apparent by last year’s Texas blackout. What will it take to engineer reliable, cost-effective energy systems for the 2020s and beyond? Black and Veatch incoming CEO Mario Azar outlines solutions in conversation with engineering.com’s Jim Anderton. 

The post The Challenge of an Electrical Grid for the 21st Century appeared first on Engineering.com.

Battery-powered cars and trucks were once the stuff of science fiction. Today however, the electrification of transportation has moved past theory and into production hardware, with every major auto manufacturer actively building production facilities to fill rising demand. And in lockstep, charging infrastructure, both private and public, is under construction worldwide.  

The post Grid Infrastructure: The Key to Widespread EV Adoption appeared first on Engineering.com.

This video was sponsored by EOS.

3D printing. Additive manufacturing. Few new process technologies have been studied, talked about and debated as much as this new way of making polymer and metal parts. Everyone from schoolchildren in classrooms to global manufacturers are using additive technology. Industry is using it for prototyping and product development, but it is increasingly applied to production part making. Many manufacturers, however, do not have the resources of a multinational corporation and many are aware of the potential of additive, but are reluctant to take the plunge. The rewards are considerable, and the barriers to entry are lower than many manufacturers think. 

The post Industrial 3D Printing: 10 Basics in 20 Minutes appeared first on Engineering.com.

This video was sponsored by EMAG.

If there is one word that defines technology in the first two decades of the 21st century, it’s connectivity. The World Wide Web, handheld devices and wireless networks have connected people in ways never imagined a generation ago. That’s also true of machines, and in fact, manufacturing equipment was networked long before the invention of the smart phone. That connectivity, however was largely based on machine monitoring and centralized production control.

The post The Connected Future of Advanced Machining appeared first on Engineering.com.

US industries have historically led in the adoption of advanced automation, all the way back to the first Unimate installed in a New Jersey diecasting plant in 1961. Today, automation has come to describe a broad spectrum of technologies, from smart sensors to autonomously guided vehicles, and until now no single trade association has emerged to represent the US industry as a whole. This has changed with the amalgamation of four industry groups into the Association for Advancing Automation, or A3. With Asian and European firms rapidly deploying advanced automation in multiple industries, the pressure is on for US firms to innovate on an equal level, or risk being left behind. A3 president Jeff Burnstein discusses the new Association, and the prospects for advanced automation in American industry.

Access all episodes of Manufacturing the Future on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

The post Advancing Automation in the US for the 21st Century appeared first on Engineering.com.

Connectivity in manufacturing has evolved from paper-based systems to centralized monitoring and control of plant operations anywhere, any time. Now, industry is looking at a new world of cloud connected devices that generate very large amounts of data. The drop in cost of automation and the rise of general-purpose production equipment in the new high mix, low volume manufacturing environment means that multiple datasets must be managed simultaneously for profitable production.

Manufacturers simply cannot tool up for production runs in the millions anymore, even in traditional smokestack industries such as consumer durables or automotive. Can traditional manufacturers adapt, or is the advantage in the hands of smaller companies that build from the ground up with highly integrated control and analytics systems? Abby Eon, PTC Kepware General Manager, describes how the future for manufacturing data management may evolve, from the implications of cloud connectivity, to the way information technology may change the way parts and products are sourced and made, worldwide.

Learn more about the way connectivity is transforming modern manufacturing.

The post S2.E4 The Data Enabled Manufacturer appeared first on Engineering.com.