Month: May 2017

This was the seventh consecutive month of expansion for the Australian PMI. While not a new record, the April result means that since February (when a PMI of 59.3 points was recorded) there have been the two highest PMI readings since May 2002 (62.0). All seven activity sub-indexes in the Australian PMI expanded in April, with new orders remaining elevated (down 1.1 points to 61.5) while sales (up 7.8 points to 65.5), supplier deliveries (up 9.4 points to 62.3) and exports (up 7.5 points to 58.6) surged higher. Readings above 50 indicate expansion in activity, with the distance from 50 indicating the strength of the increase. “The strong showing by Australian manufacturing in April consolidates the recovery that has been underway in the industrial sector since August 2015 – notwithstanding a temporary setback in the September quarter of last year,” said Innes Willox, Ai Group Chief Executive. “The April performance featured strong growth in exports and local sales of food and beverages manufacturing, building materials, specialist machinery…

Preparations for the show are now entering their final stages, with work now underway at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre to ensure everything is ready when the event begins on Tuesday. It marks the culmination of a long and complicated process in making Austech a reality, with the exhibition space fully booked well in advance, and pre-registrations from prospective visitors already very strong. According to AMTIL Event Manager and Austech organiser Kim Banks, the enthusiasm shown both by exhibitors and by people planning to visit the show, is indicative of an willingness across the industry to invest and build for the future. “We’ve definitely seen a big surge in confidence this time round,” says AMTIL Event Manager and Austech organiser Kim Banks. “We saw bookings come in a lot earlier than usual, filling the venue way ahead of schedule. What’s also very exciting is the number of exhibitors who are coming back to the show after not participating for the last few years. It’s all looking very exciting.” Held at…

An Okuma customer for more than 35 years, RC Williams Pty Ltd is a manufacturing company at the cutting edge of technology and automation. This company has doubled its business in the last 12 months and is very much a personalised family operation, with the family’s second generation –Robin, Sue, Nick and Sam Williams – running the company with a team of highly skilled precision engineers. “The recent installation of the latest Okuma Multus U4000 follows the successful use of the Okuma Multus B400-W,” says Sam Williams. “A general multi-function machine centre, designed to reduce set-up time by virtually eliminating repetitive fixturing, has reduced non-cutting time to a minimum. Along with high accuracy levels even in complex parts, it has made us very competitive and generated additional work. But this is just one of seven Okuma machines which consistently produce highly accurate components at speed with cost savings for us even of short runs.” The company takes full advantage of Okuma’s robotic automation, generous training programs, technical…

Co-located with Austech at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from 9-12 May, National Manufacturing Week will feature a series of sessions looking at the future of advanced manufacturing in Australia and around the world. Held at the Industry 4.0 Theatre within the main exhibition space, sessions will include: Australian Advanced Manufacturing Council SME Showcase 10 May, 11.30-1.00pm Hosted by the Australian Advanced Manufacturing Council and moderated by Northrop Grumman’s Ian Irving, this fast-paced showcase session will profile a range of Australia’s best performing small to medium manufacturing enterprises. Presentations will highlight some of the characteristics and strategies that are helping these growing leaders to excel in an increasingly challenging local and global manufacturing marketplace. Secrets to building scale, finding cutting edge niches, accessing global supply chains, R&D partnerships and more will be explored as experts from Anatomics Pty Ltd, TomCar Australia, Textor Technologies, the Anca Group and Quickstep Technologies share their experiences and stories. Keynote…

In comparison with machining steel, aluminium and its alloys require much less cutting force, and therefore the cutting edge of a milling tool experiences relatively low mechanical loading. For the purpose of this article, we refer to aluminium and its alloys as aluminium. Aluminium exhibits high thermal conductivity, and therefore the chips produced when machining aluminium transfer high levels of generated heat, resulting in significantly reduced thermal loading of the cutting edge. Due to these properties, milling aluminium is characterised by extremely high cutting speeds and feeds. Nonetheless, this does not guarantee that milling aluminium is quite so simple. The material characteristics of aluminium result in the formation of built-up edge (BUE) when machined. This unwelcome phenomenon increases the mechanical load on the cutting edge making efficient chip flow more difficult to achieve, affecting the balance of rotating tools and causing…