Industry News

This July saw a surge in wholesale electricity prices in South Australia, rising to an average of $321 per megawatt hour, compared with $80/MWh for July 2015. The price spikes drew extensive media coverage, with some commentators claiming SA’s extensive adoption of renewable power had left it exposed in a month of unusually low winds. The Minerals Council of Australia claimed that SA’s decision to “disproportionally rely on intermittent wind and solar power” raised the risk of “higher prices, supply instability and greater reliance on imported power”. These claims were met with equally vocal counter-arguments. The Climate Council published a report suggesting that electricity price spikes in SA had actually fallen as renewable electricity had risen. Professor Hugh Saddler of the Australian National University (ANU) argued that the problem lay with broader flaws in the SA wholesale electricity market, and that wind power in fact helped to smooth out more frequent price spikes. The SA episode demonstrates that renewable energy remains the focus…

Eastgate is a family-owned and operated repetition engineering company that brings a 60-year-old reputation for quality together with high-tech precision and state-of-the-art machinery. Located in the Brisbane suburb of Coorparoo, Eastgate is a one-stop-shop for custom-made component manufacturing. The company’s services encompass assembly, welding, bending, polishing and coating components. Eastgate is staffed by versatile and multi-skilled tradespeople, enabling it to serve a diverse range of industries. Its clients come from just about every industry under the sun, spanning from construction to rail to marine sectors, and include large multinational companies and government agencies. Founded in the 1950s, by the 1960s Eastgate established itself as a successful and highly regarded machine shop. In recent years, the company has embraced automation, resulting in a sharp improvement in work quality and allowing it to expand beyond its traditional high-production, high-volume work to encompass small, customised production runs. Eastgate’s transformation originated three years ago when a change of ownership instigated a drive to improve efficiency and accuracy. That saw…

Readings below 50 indicate contraction in activity, with the distance from 50 indicating the strength of the decrease. September’s stabilisation in the Australian PMI was heavily influenced by activity in the food & beverages sub-sector, which recovered after contracting in August (up 4.1 points to 52.8). The large machinery & equipment sub-sector also moved out of contraction (up 4.6 points to 52.8). Three of the other manufacturing sub-sectors maintained August’s expansion (that is, above 50 points in three-month moving averages): printing & recorded media (down 0.8 points to 62.8), metal products (down 4.6 points to 51.3), and petroleum & chemical products (down 2.1 points to 52.7). The non-metallic mineral products (down 7.6 points to 46.0) and wood & paper products (down 3.4 points to 48.6) sub-sectors slipped into contraction in September. “The manufacturing sector avoided a deeper fall in September after the sharp drop recorded in August,” said Ai Group Chief Executive Innes Willox. “The food and beverages sub-sector was the major swing factor with a…

The three-axis, 4m x 2m machine features an additional C-axis to enable the use of steered tooling such as variable angled knives, steered reciprocating knives for duct board and fibreglass insulation, or steered pizza cutter wheels. Powered by an AC servo-motor, it is capable of rotating up to 500rpm.To decrease production time, ART has equipped its XR Router series with a gantry-mounted covered automated ten-position tool changer, which turns variable-angle cutting, V-grooving and routing into one efficient fully automated process. Soon after purchasing his XR5000 router two-and-a-half years ago, Lintott saw the potential for expanding its use from his existing fibreglass business, based in Woodford, Queensland, to supplying CNC routed products to existing and new clients. “The machine suddenly expanded the scope of the work we could do,” he says. “Along with the potential for involving ourselves in areas we hadn’t previously…

By their very nature, medical devices face a much higher regulatory bar. Also, their useful life span is highly volatile due to technological advances, changing treatment protocols, market conditions, social convention or changes within the biology of a given disease. Almost all manufacturers will modify products over time to address changing needs or all sorts. Medical devices, meaning those devices that either diagnosis or mitigate illness, are no exception. This article will review how engineering changes must be documented over time to assure that any device in use is properly equipped to address the application it is addressing. Specially, it will look at how technologies such as engineering change control systems and product lifecycle management (PLM) are used to make sure products in the field are kept current. Products evolve. They change over time in response to the environments in which they’re being used and in the operational demands they are subject to. For simple, low-complexity products, this doesn’t present an issue. But…

Ask any original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to share their critical business challenges, and they are likely to raise common issues such as quality control, efficiency levels, budgeting, and inventory management. However, with the advent of technology and globalisation, modern OEMs are now faced with yet another area of concern – the proliferation of counterfeit products. Counterfeiting has evolved over the years, from being largely localised operations into highly profitable global businesses with mass production facilities, international sales, and complex global distribution networks. According to the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the value of global counterfeit goods is expected to exceed US$1.7 trillion. In the past, counterfeiting used to be more prevalent in consumer goods, but counterfeiters have started to target highly sophisticated and engineered products in recent years, and B2B companies are similarly at risk to product piracy. One such example is in the consumables of plasma cutting systems, such as nozzles, electrodes, and swirl rings. Counterfeiting in plasma cutting consumables Plasma cutting makes use of an electrically conductive gas, such as nitrogen and oxygen,…

The Airbus Group dominates the industrial landscape in south-west France. Along with an extensive supply chain in the Toulouse area, the European aerospace giant is single-handedly responsible for a good deal of the region’s economy. In fact, in 2011, when word got out that Airbus was planning a major manufacturing programme, husband and wife entrepreneurs Sébastien and Sonia Korczak decided to establish their own subcontract machining facility, KMP, with the intention of servicing the large number of tier-2 and tier-3 aerospace companies in the area. “Before we opted for Haas, we were told by other machine tool suppliers that they weren’t up to the job of cutting hard materials,” says Sébastien. “In fact, it turns out they didn’t want us to know that Haas machines can be pushed day and night cutting…

The medical gas supplier for the hospital is BOC Healthcare, delivering hundreds of full medical gas cylinders each month to 49 hospital departments that support 359 beds across 12 floors. Christopher Collie, Facilities Coordinator at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, says: “Both previous hospitals had longstanding partnerships with BOC and this has continued at our new facility. Their team has been working with us to meet our gas needs including a new cylinder management solution that is already making a huge difference.” Bringing together medical professionals from two separate hospitals naturally meant staff had slightly different approaches for certain tasks. One area was in the way that clinicians and medical staff were projecting their gas usage. “After opening we noticed an over-projection of gas cylinders right across the hospital with some wards ordering up to three more medical cylinders than what they actually needed,” says Collie. “There didn’t seem to be an established confidence in ordering so the result was a…

Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is an exciting new technology whose benefits are already being embraced in real-life applications, and nowhere more so than in the field of medicine. Success stories involving 3D-printed titanium implants such as vertebral cages and heel joints have received widespread coverage in the popular media. However, in the dental arena, less ‘earth-shattering’ applications of 3D printing may not have found their way into the media. Nonetheless, they are already delivering significant reductions in costs and increases in the speed and accuracy of production of crowns, bridges and orthodontic appliances. Dutch medical design company Xilloc Medical is one business already making a name for itself through its medical breakthroughs. Already famed for printing a titanium jaw-bone using complex algorithms to create a design that gives blood vessels, nerves and muscles a better opportunity to grow into the implant, Xilloc is now pushing the envelope with its most recent development in the…

The Westpac-AusChamber Actual Composite index rebounded in the September quarter to 57.3 points, up 2.3 points, returning the index to near its 2015 average. The above-par reading for the Composite index, which trended higher in 2014 and 2015, reflects strength across new orders, output and overtime, and an emerging resilience in employment. “Manufacturing is benefitting from a strong upswing in new home building activity, although rates of growth have moderated, and a lift in renovation activity,” said Andrew Hanlan, Senior Economist at Westpac. “It is also benefitting from a significant improvement in competitiveness flowing from the sharply lower currency, down 28% against the US dollar since the 2013 peak.” The report found that businesses are looking to 2017 to be a positive year for profits, driven by rising turnover and a lower Australian dollar boosting export returns. A net 25% of respondents expected profits to rise in the 12 months to come. Positive expectations among manufacturers were centred…

The YPO (Young Presidents Organisation) is a global peer network of chief executives and business leaders. The YPO awards recognise members of pioneering business innovations. YPO announced the winners during its inaugural YPO Innovation Week - a series of more than 50 in-person and virtual events around the world focusing on the latest trends in innovation. Watkins Steel beat applicants from around the world to be recognised for the ability to develop “out-of-the-box” strategies to overcome common limitations in the building and construction industry. For Watkins Steel, this award was the end result of interviewing clients in the construction industry about their biggest pain points, limitations, and challenges. During the process, the senior management team learned that they were primarily judged on how they reacted to on-site construction problems. “The building and construction industry is time-critical and unexpected challenges arise,” explains Des Watkins, Director of Watkins Steel. “More often than not, these challenges are the result of human error. After talking to clients we realised that creating…

The steel sections of each louvre have been shaped so that they form part of a series of 3D images that can be viewed from different angles as people walk around the building. Industrial Galvanizers (IG), a member of the Galvanizers Association of Australia (GAA), was engaged to take the more than 480 individual steel sections and coat them in zinc prior to delivery to the construction site. The IG factory in suburban Campbellfield, north of the Melbourne CBD, returned each batch of the completed galvanization project to the steel fabricators, Fabmetal Specialists, with an average turnaround of 2-3 working days in plant. According to David Reilly, Sales Manager at IG, galvanization provides a long-lasting, tough, durable coating that provides complete corrosion protection both inside and out in addition to enhancing the appearance. Galvanization has…

The Centre will be a hub for researchers and industry to identify, improve and then tailor energy technologies to meet specific requirements. Combining two or more forms of energy generation, storage or end-use technologies, hybrid systems deliver overall cost and efficiency benefits, compared with single source energy systems. Configurations include renewable or non-renewable energy sources, electrical and chemical energy storage and fuel cells, often connected via a smart grid. The collaborative space will be used to share the benefits of emerging hybrid energy systems with industry and government to maximise the value of local energy sources. CSIRO Fellow Dr Sukhvinder Badwal said there was a rapidly growing global demand for hybrid energy systems based on increased availability of renewable and modular power generation and storage technologies such as batteries, fuel cells, and household solar. "These technologies are becoming cost competitive, but the key to greater use is to combine them in connected hybrid systems," Dr Badwal said. "By doing this, we can offer substantial improvements in performance, reliability of power, flexibility and cost."…