Manufacturing Technology

VISI software was at the heart of a mould maker’s recent move to new 6,500 square foot premises. KA Tooling say VISI gave them confidence to invest in additional CNC machines and move to larger premises to meet the growing demand for their custom made injection mould tools. According to Director Alex Hill, VISI ensures jobs are finished on the machines much faster than with their previous software. “When we first installed VISI the efficiency gains in terms of speed and accuracy enabled us to take on more work, but we were becoming limited by the size of our premises and number of machines.” They recently moved to their new larger more efficient premises, Alex says they utilise VISI to the full – four seats of VISI Modelling and VISI Machining, a VISI Viewer package, and a seat each of VISI Mould, Electrode, Flow-Lite and Compass Technology. “We maximise technology to reduce costs and improve turnaround, especially in the aluminium market, and VISI enables us to achieve this with top quality moulds. The days of producing aluminium tooling to get the customer’s product to market and then replacing it with a P20 steel tool after around 50 shots off it, have gone. We make aluminium tools where customers produce over half a million mouldings.” As KA Tooling now manufacture more than 100 high precision tools a year, Alex Hill says VISI’s Compass Technology is particularly important for automating the process of manufacturing bolster sets. “It’s rules based machining, by setting parameters for different features within a bolster plate. Thanks to Compass, we’re now using just one machining centre, rather than two, to produce bolsters. “We offer an expedited service – customers come to us because we can offer a two week turnaround from start to finish, whereas most companies quote […]

By Professor Sami Kara Director of Postgraduate Research Faculty of Engineering University of New South Wales Manufacturers in New Zealand and Australia are hearing a constant refrain: to remain competitive in the global manufacturing marketplace, companies must become more productive with fewer resources and must find ways to differentiate themselves from the competition. As well as becoming more ‘lean’ there is increasing pressure to become more environmentally sound. The answer, according to our research at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, could be Life Cycle Engineering (LCE). LCE is an approach to product design and manufacture that takes into account the entire product life cycle from beginning to end. With increased resource scarcity there is an opportunity for manufacturers to minimise their environmental impact and improve return, by controlling the entire product life cycle. This is a dramatic departure from the traditional manufacturing approach, which generally concerns itself with the product’s life cycle only up until the end of its warranty period, which has resulted in a disposable society, where many products are simply sent to landfill. The world has limited resources to sustain production. Approximately 89 million barrels of oil and liquid fuels were consumed per day worldwide in 2011 . By 2030 China alone is expected to consume 17.5 million barrels per day . Limited copper resources will cause similar issues. With this increased pressure on resources, manufacturers will eventually have to find alternatives to using high levels of raw materials. If products were designed from the beginning to be dismantled at the end of their lifespan, it would make the recycling process much easier and more cost-effective, and significant resources would not be wasted. LCE would go some way to addressing this issue but to be truly viable it must […]

Rockwell Automation has announced the launch of the Allen-Bradley ArmorStratix 5700, its first on-machine switch. Built with ruggedised IP67 protection, the Layer 2 managed industrial Ethernet switch can be mounted directly onto a machine or application, reducing the overall size and cost of a control cabinet, and shrinking the machine footprint. In many applications, cabinet space for system-level networks is limited or nonexistent. The ArmorStratix 5700 switch expands the Allen-Bradley On-Machine offering from Rockwell Automation – an industrially hardened portfolio of products that requires no cabinetry – and leverages pre-configured, quick-connect systems and simplified wiring layouts to reduce installation, troubleshooting and maintenance activities.” The ArmorStratix 5700 managed switch advances connected enterprise goals by delivering integration of machine-level data that, due to cost or location, would otherwise remain isolated from business-level systems. Using the Cisco IOS network infrastructure software, this switch manages the transfer of production data to enterprise-level databases and information systems for improved decision making. Senior analyst with ARC Advisory Group comments: “Machine-mounted Ethernet switches with M12 connectors and IP67 ratings are very popular among machine builders. The new ArmorStratix 5700 switch is a joint Rockwell Automation-Cisco developed product that includes these features along with Cisco IOS. This robust, machine-mounted switch is a new development that should go a long way toward resolving the information technology/operational technology struggles in manufacturing plants today.” This industrial switch simplifies the design and development of machine-level networks through configuration and monitoring tools. These tools help enable easy setup and diagnostics from within the Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture system – bridging the gap between IT and the automation engineer. The ArmorStratix 5700 Layer 2 switch offers high availability, Quality of Service (QoS), and automated monitoring to help simplify network optimization and convergence. The switch comes standard with 8, 16 and 24 fixed-port configurations, and […]

The AeroCheck Eddy Current Flaw Detector is fully capable of all the typical eddy current inspection applications on an aircraft including paint thickness, sub-surface and surface crack detection. The AeroCheck is ideal for inspecting areas such as: Wheel brakes; Wheels; Landing gear; Fasteners; Engine mounts; Fuselage; Wing surface and hinges; Bulkheads; Door access points; Engine blades; Engine discs and much more. Fitted with the industry standard 12-Way Lemo connector and co-axial Lemo 00 connectors the AeroCheck can be used with absolute, bridge and reflection probes without the need for adaptors. The AeroCheck includes rotary capability as standard and can be used with the ETher Mercury, Hocking 33A100, and Rohmann MR3 Drive. With a crisp daylight readable LCD colour screen, weighing just 1.2kg and housed in a tough case, the AeroCheck is ideal for working in any environment and can be used for up to ten hours with a pencil probe and seven hours with the rotary drive and probe attached. The intuitive menu options can be configured to the user’s personal preferences and with the built-in “flip” function the AeroCheck works equally well for left or right-handed operators.

The latest release of Delcam’s PowerINSPECT inspection software has a new interface with new icons that make the software more intuitive and even easier to use. Other enhancements in the new version include the ability to create compound items, and so speed up and simplify repetitive measurements, enhancements to the measurement dialogs and a further increase in the range of geometric features that can be inspected. The new interface was developed to further improve the ease of use that has been central to PowerINSPECT becoming the world’s leading hardware-independent inspection software. Over the last few releases, the software has seen a significant increase in the range of measurements that it can make. The software can now be used to take all types of simple measurements and to inspect a growing variety of geometric features, as well as offering more tools for analysing complex 3D surfaces. In addition to making it easier to negotiate the greater range of options, the new interface features freshly-designed icons, which give a cleaner look and feel to the software. In addition, PowerINSPECT now has the ability for users to create custom toolbars, which allow frequently-used commands to be grouped together in one convenient place, and so improve speed and ease of use. It is possible to export and import toolbars, so users can easily transfer their set-up to a different PC or share their toolbars with other operators. During inspection, 2D features (circles, slots, rectangles and the like) are always projected to a reference plane. For example, when inspecting a circle representing the top of a cylinder, the user will want to measure the properties of the circle and its height. PowerINSPECT can now create a compound item that combines the plane and the feature together into a single compound feature, and assumes that the […]

“One of the most appealing aspects of Universal Robots’ new generation of industrial robots is they no longer require specialist knowledge to operate.”       Pic: Steve Wilson High labour costs and geographic remoteness have meant to be competitive in global markets, New Zealand (NZ) manufacturers have needed to apply new, innovative technologies to their production processes to deliver products to market faster, cheaper and with the highest level of quality. To solve part of that problem, Talbot Technologies deployed two of Universal Robots’ UR10 industrial robot arms to perform in-mould modelling, transfer moulding and co-moulding tasks on the company’s Christchurch production line. Since the installation of the first UR10 in 2013, Talbot Technologies has already reported increases in productivity, reliability, quality and cost savings. Best-in-class technology and support: Talbot Technologies is an integrated technical plastics manufacturer and solution provider that works as a design, development and production partner across a wide range of industries, for companies across the globe. Talbot Technologies, like so many NZ companies, has been trialling various technologies aimed at providing high quality output at a lower cost. Having been introduced to Universal Robots’ technology by Design Energy, the company’s NZ distributor, Talbot Technologies began exploring various application options. According to Steve Wilson, Executive Director of Talbot Technologies, the business required a flexible, ease-to-program five axis robot for a particular type of application. “We conduct complex in-mould labelling which has quite a few components and a fixed rail robot simply doesn’t have the capacity or the versatility to deliver the type of results we need. After extensive discussions with Design Energy, we agreed that the style of robot offered by Universal Robots would best suit our requirements,” Wilson commented. “We had looked at other robots, however the strong ROI combined with its reliability and versatility […]

Offering both tools and services, Maplesoft Engineering Solutions help engineers validate and optimise product designs, produce extremely fast simulation code for hardware-in-the-loop and other types of simulations where execution speed is critical, and develop specialised analysis and design calculation tools. Maplesoft Engineering Solutions also support model development for model predictive control, an advanced technique used to represent the behaviour of complex systems. The Maplesoft Engineering Solutions team has expertise in a variety of engineering fields and extensive experience in model-based design. By leveraging the unique benefits of MapleSim and Maple, advanced engineering design tools from Maplesoft, they help engineers reduce development risk, create better products, and get to market faster. MapleSim and Maple are also available for engineers to use directly in their own development projects. MapleSim is an advanced system-level modelling and simulation tool from Maplesoft that applies modern techniques to dramatically reduce model development time, provide greater insight into system behaviour, and produce fast, high-fidelity simulations. MapleSim is based on Maple, the technical computing software for engineers, mathematicians, and scientists. Maplesoft Engineering Solutions are used by customers in a variety of domains, such as electric and hybrid-electric vehicles, ground transportation, space systems, batteries, mining, and manufacturing. Past projects include a robotic arm for drilling in mines, a motion platform for driving simulators, a torsional vibration analysis tool for marine drivelines, batteries for hybrid-electric vehicles, and dialysis machines. While projects vary greatly, they frequently involve the following: High performance plant models for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) applications. Generating high-fidelity plant models from many system design tools typically results in code that is not fast enough for real-time, HIL execution, and engineers often perform a trade-off between model fidelity and performance.