Month: August 2021

The company is known for its expertise as a manufacturer of top-quality decorative surfaces, and its success can be attributed to an ongoing focus on product and manufacturing innovation. Throughout its history, Laminex has continually adapted, reinvesting in the skills, safety, performance and capacity of its plants through new equipment, training and development. The company’s evolution began following World War II when founder Robert Sykes began to look to adapt his techniques to make new products. He travelled to the US to research the fabrication of decorative laminates and began producing Australia’s first interior décor product range in the late 1940s. With Australia’s cities booming, new house builds burgeoning, and demand for affordable furniture escalating, Sykes’ foresight to innovate was astute. He established the Cheltenham factory in 1952 and installed a cutting-edge hydraulic press to enable quicker production and expansion of the product range to meet market demand and improve returns. The quest to improve and streamline production…

The resulting productivity losses, according to Australian hearing care and professional services groups, total more than $16.2bn, or $4,109 per person with hearing loss, mostly due to reduced employment of people with hearing loss ($12.6bn). Workers in their 50s and 60s are hit disproportionately hard, and are the most prone to further damage from workplace NVH. These numbers will be further swelled as the government pension qualification age rises to 67. Air Springs Supply is the distributor for some of the world’s most effective NVH isolators. James Maslin, technical product manager at Air Springs Supply, says: “The hearing loss figures don’t surprise us, because it has been known for a long time that continual exposure to loud noise is the most common preventable cause of sensorineural hearing loss. This is the permanent type of hearing loss, which accounts for more than 90% of hearing loss in adults. “It is important to…

UniSA Professor of Laser Engineering, David Lancaster, will lead the three-year project, funded by the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG), in collaboration with the University of Adelaide. Lancaster, who heads one of the country’s leading laser and photonics manufacturing research laboratories at UniSA, will use the funding to help build sovereign manufacturing capability, bringing Australia up to speed with other developed nations. “High-powered lasers are increasingly being used in defence and manufacturing, but despite a long history of developing lasers in Australia, our technology is still relatively immature compared to other countries,” says Professor Lancaster. “There is a substantial gap between the research outputs and the needs of our defence industry, so Australia has had to buy this technology from other countries, which is quite restrictive because most nations severely limit their exports of lasers.” Over the next three years, Professor Lancaster aims to build a new type of high-powered laser that combines multiple smaller lasers, finetuning the manufacturing process…

By acquiring CNC Software, Sandvik gains Mastercam, the most widely used Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) brand in the industry with an installed base of around 270,000 licenses/users, as well as a strong market reseller network and well-established partnerships with leading machine makers and tooling companies. The Mastercam brand and its reseller channel will remain intact. Gcode has been supporting the Australian region as Mastercam’s reseller for nearly six years. Greg Williams, Director of Gcode, stressed that for Mastercam users in Australia the customer experience will remain completely unchanged, with the same level of customer service and support that they have come to expect. “Mastercam Software Australia is committed to support and training of all users,” said Williams. “I am very passionate about manufacturing in Australia and pride myself in partnering with progressive manufacturing companies to achieve better outcomes. It’s an exciting time for manufacturing, and we look forward…

Scientists from Osaka University used stem cells isolated from Wagyu cows to 3D-print a meat alternative containing muscle, fat, and blood vessels arranged to closely resemble conventional steaks. This work may help usher in a more sustainable future with widely available cultured meat. Wagyu can be literally translated into “Japanese cow,” and is famous around the globe for its high content of intramuscular fat, known as marbling or sashi. This marbling provides the beef its rich flavours and distinctive texture. However, the way cattle are raised today is often considered to be unsustainable in light of its outsized contribution to climate emissions. Currently, the available “cultured meat” alternatives only consist primarily of poorly organised muscle fibre cells that fail to reproduce the complex structure of real beef steaks. Now, a team of scientists led by Osaka University have used 3D printing to create synthetic meat that looks more like the real thing. “Using the histological structure of Wagyu beef as a blueprint, we…

These new hardware and software releases are built to help manufacturers reinvent the way they overcome global supply chain challenges by producing parts efficiently and safely at the point of need. Whether on a factory floor or in the most remote areas of the world, these advances are designed to enable manufacturers to recover faster when parts break, operate with less on-hand inventory, and minimise equipment downtime. The Metal X Gen 2 builds on the legacy of its predecessor, the original Metal X System released in 2017, by pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in printing complex, industrial-grade metal parts with key hardware developments that improve user experience and increase operator safety to make metal printing even easier. New features such as an external seven-inch touchscreen, door position sensors and additional chamber insulation make the Gen 2 even more energy- and time-efficient than before. Markforged has also released Next Day Metal across its entire global fleet of metal printers. This over-the-air software update unlocks print speeds up-to twice as…

“The project started in June last year and took four months to complete,” advises Jefferson Harcourt, Executive Chairman and Founder of Grey Innovation. “The ventilators were urgently needed for Australian COVID patients and the project retained or created 350 jobs. “Initially we had approached the Victorian Government with the hypothesis that we would design the ventilators and there would be an overseas manufacturer involved. Then I went to Gavin Smith, President of Bosch Australia, explained the project and asked if Bosch would participate. “Gavin said ‘Yes’, and by 9am the next day, we had arranged a meeting with the Victorian Government. A budget was approved for a working group to make the emergency ventilators around the clock. We then started calling every manufacturer in Victoria that could make ventilator parts.” Harcourt negotiated a licence agreement with Smiths Medical in London for a certified ventilator design based on Smiths’ Pneupac Transport Ventilators.…

Community, government and international concerns around our waste and recycling challenges are converging, with a growing willingness across societies to embrace the issues we face. The materials revolution values the sustainability of all the materials we use from our planet, which are essentially finite in supply. Fast fashion and consumption have outpaced society’s ability to effectively deal with the consequences of a throw-away mentality, such as overflowing landfills, waste stockpile fires, and pollution of our waterways and atmosphere. A growing understanding about materials sustainability is juxtaposed against a consumption mentality for convenience and cheaper materials and products. We need to rethink our attitudes to the resources we rely on for our societies to function, and rethink our approaches to waste. The fact is that waste is, and should be treated as, a renewable resource. We need to add ‘reform’ as a fourth R to the three…

The HILT CRC aims to develop technologies to decarbonise Australia’s heavy industrial sector, leverage the country’s natural endowments in mineral and clean energy resources and seize the opportunity of growing export markets for certified low-carbon products. Over the next 10 years, MHI Australia and Primetals, a member of MHI Group, will contribute financially to the CRC as well as with their experience in iron and steel production to this effort. The companies will focus on research & development of hydrogen-based direct reduction of iron ore. This includes the novel HYFOR (hydrogen-based fine-ore reduction) technology currently being piloted by Primetals in Europe. Australia has the world’s largest iron ore deposits and is the leading exporter of iron ore. Since the iron and steel sector is responsible for 7%-10% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, Australia has a key role to play in the decarbonisation of the industry. Switching from traditional coal- and coke-based ironmaking processes to hydrogen-based production methods is the only way for the industry to fully decarbonise. Deploying these technologies at…

Whilst the piston-type, reciprocating air compressor has been a reliable workhorse for workshops and smaller industry applications, it can be somewhat inefficient, expensive and noisy in operation. Kaishan’s Scroll range of advanced, compact,fixed-orbit, lubricated air compressors offer great benefits over the conventional piston type compressors. Scroll technology has produced a compact air compressor with a direct drive, dynamically 3D-balanced compressor that delivers quiet, stable and energy-efficient performance to far outstrip equivalent piston-type reciprocating machines. With the added benefit of continuous load capability and an integral after cooler to reduce moisture carry over, the Scroll system offers a highly reliable compressed air supply with considerably lower energy bills. The dynamically balanced, non-contact, fixed-orbit technology also results in significantly longer element life. Unlike old piston technology, the Scroll compressor includes an advanced digital control panel for ease and safety of operation. This provides the operator with monitoring of all key compressor functions, fault detection and protection, and alerts when a service is due. The Scroll OX series of…

The report, Advanced recycling technologies to address Australia’s plastic waste, evaluates the ways to convert plastic waste that can’t be recycled with existing methods, into new resources to build Australia’s circular economy. It is estimated that 130,000 tonnes of plastic leaks into the Australian marine environment each year. Less than 12% of plastic waste is recycled and about 85% ends up in landfill. Advanced recycling of plastic waste, also referred to as feedstock, molecular, or chemical recycling, converts plastic waste into its chemical building blocks and back into plastic, or other useful resources such as fuel. CSIRO researcher Sarah King said with new waste plastic export rules in place, new technologies were critical to support the increased recovery and recycling of plastics. “Advanced recycling technologies could turn hard-to-recycle plastics, such as mixed, multi-layer, flexible or contaminated plastics back into food-grade recycled plastics or other products through chemical, thermal or biological processes,” King said. “It is suitable for flexible or soft ‘scrunchable’ plastics used for food packaging, such as food pouches and chocolate wrappers.…

As a design-focused operation, based in the Melbourne suburb of Broadmeadows, Integra Systems’ Managing Director Paul Hughes considers Industry 4.0 to be paramount at the company for many reasons: to drive better productivity across the factory; to improve the quality of everything to which the team put their name; to make it easier for designers and manufacturers to collaborate productively with their customers; and to increase staff morale and overall satisfaction for the people who help make Integra stand out from the competition. Paul talks about bringing all of the many varied aspects of the company’s production process together in a new kind of synchronicity, to meet the demands of the next generation in manufacturing. Accordingly, Industry 4.0 has played a pivotal role in making that happen. “Our vision of Industry 4.0 was the ability to be able to link a whole group of subsystems…

In machining aerospace components, the main challenges relate to component materials. Titanium, high-temperature superalloys (HTSA), and creep-resisting steel are difficult to cut and machining is a real bottleneck in the whole aircraft supply chain. Poor machinability of these materials results in low cutting speeds, which significantly reduces productivity and shortens tool life. Both these factors are directly connected with cutting tools. In fact, when dealing with hard-to-machine typical aerospace materials, cutting tool functionality defines the existing level of productivity. The truth is, cutting tools in their development lag machine tools, and this development gap limits the capabilities of leading-edge machines in the manufacturing of aerospace components. Modern aircraft, especially unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), feature a considerably increased share of composite materials. Effective machining composites demand specific cutting tools, which is the focus of a technological leap in the aerospace industry. Aircraft-grade aluminium continues to be a widely used material for fuselage elements. It may seem that machining aluminium is simple. However, selecting the right cutting tool is a necessary key to…