Industry News

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."…

One of the key success factors of a successful business is its employees. For me, as the Managing Director of Headland Machinery, with a team of more than 25 service engineers operating throughout Australia, ensuring that their day runs as smoothly and productively as possible will not only benefit the company, but also our customers. We all know, pleasing a customer doesn’t end once you have sold them your product. The customer lifecycle is a continual process and field service is a part of that process. For the last five to 10 years, companies like Headland Machinery have been harnessing the power of mobile technology to improve efficiencies and the day-to-day running of the service team. But, what happens to those companies with field service staff who are still operating manually and continue to ignore the need for an automated solution? They get left behind. We have seen in…

Over the last few years an increasing number of companies have chosen to automate their operations. The $152bn global industrial automation market has grown at 6% per year for more than a decade, which is nearly twice as fast as the overall industrial production growth rate. Automation technologies can significantly reduce reliance on intensive and repetitive labour, leading to safer workplaces, increased throughput volumes and reduced expenses. Due to these benefits, and the lowered costs of implementation, more manufacturing, warehousing, distribution and storage companies are turning to automation technologies to innovate their organisations. The key consideration is what automation processes are applicable to your organisation. What are the potential benefits, the limitations and critically, the investment requirements? Safer workplaces through automation The implications of improved safety under automation are significant. Some of the most common OH&S risks in the manufacturing workplace include: Accidents by mobile plant equipment. Falling objects. Lifting and repetitive bending…

AMT: Tell us about PrefabAUS, how it was established, and what its objectives are. Warren McGregor: PrefabAUS is Australia’s peak body for offsite construction. I understand it came about as a result of a Future Proofing Schools Round Table Session in June 2012 when 54 delegates from manufacturing, architecture, government infrastructure, and university research teams explored the future of prefabrication for the education sector. The round table was part of an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant. One core resolution that emerged from the Round Table Session was the need for a peak body for Australia’s prefabricated building industry to support collaboration, innovation and quality information sharing. PrefabAUS came into being in 2013. Enshrined in the PrefabAUS constitution is the primary objective to represent, showcase and advance Australia’s prefabricated building industry through collaboration, innovation and education. As part of this, PrefabAUS seeks to explore and address barriers to the uptake of building prefabrication, encourage research, increase Government and wider community awareness and understanding of offsite construction, and facilitate industry networking.   AMT: What is your membership made up of? WM: In just our…

When referring to medical industry machining, the term encompasses all machining related to surgical implants, orthopaedic devices and medical instruments. The expression also includes small-scale machining and micromachining, as today’s implanted devices often consist of or include minute components. Among other difficult to machine advanced materials, titanium is often used in medical devices, due to its non-reactivity characteristics associated with the human body. Small metalworking shops wishing to compete in the challenge of producing medical parts must develop a range of advanced capabilities to meet the specialised demands of the medical industry, especially when involved in small batches and prototype work. Mindful of the specific requirements of this challenging sector, the creative work and exhaustive field trials undertaken by Iscar’s advanced R&D department have resulted in the significant expansion of the company’s range of cutting tools associated with the medical industry. In addition to innovative new…

The Future Advanced Threat Simulator (FATS) is an airborne radar system designed to closely emulate the in-flight behaviour of a range of anti-ship missiles. It has been designed to provide a test and evaluation and fleet training capability to assist with the development of advanced maritime self-protection concepts for the RAN. BAE Systems will design, develop, manufacture, test and deliver the FATS capability suite. Work on the project will start this month and will support 20 specialist engineering roles at the company’s Edinburgh Parks facility in Adelaide. “At the heart of this impressive technology is local innovation,” said BAE Systems Australia CEO, Glynn Phillips. “The simulator is an advanced capability, developed by our specialist engineering team here in South Australia. It underscores to our Defence customer that we have an airborne test and evaluation capability unmatched within Australia. “We are very pleased to play such a pivotal part in the development of the next generation of threat emulation capability for Defence.” In its flight mode, the FATS is configured in…

Starting as a small boutique laboratory servicing a limited number of podiatrists in and around Melbourne, the reputation of Footwork Podiatric Laboratory was soon recognised by others in the profession. Today the company is recognised as one of the leading suppliers of orthotics not only in Australia but around the world. “One of the keys to our success is our heavy investment in technology and in the design and development of our very own software,” says Maliszewski. “We support podiatrists in optimising their clients’ health outcomes by creating the highest-quality orthotics engineered to precise specifications each and every time using only the finest of materials. “Orthotics are inserts placed into the shoe to control or correct abnormal lower limb gait and alignment. The aim of a correctly prescribed orthotic is to modify how a client’s foot makes contact with the ground, thereby reducing stress…

Although consumers will pull out their phones and use apps for banking, shopping or planning a journey, businesses have tended to head in the opposite direction. They favour complex software, such as enterprise resource planning tools, to optimise their activity using the wealth of data at their disposal. A group of EU researchers and SMEs decided it was time for a rethink. Why not embrace the advantages offered by apps and simplify monitoring, control and decision-making? The team decided to concentrate on apps for advanced manufacturing and engineering companies, especially SMEs. “We are now in an age of mass personalisation,” explains APPS4AME Project Co-ordinator Jonathan Oesterle. “We are not looking at mass production anymore but on-demand and just-in-time manufacturing. Each customer can now order bespoke, tailor-made products. How you optimise this kind of work and deal with the growing amount of data is a real challenge.…

Six of the seven manufacturing activity sub-indexes contracted in August, with production (down 9.4 points to 43.0), employment (down 11.9 points to 44.6), exports (down 14.8 points to 44.7), deliveries (down 16.4 points to 46.2) and sales (down 14.1 points to 45.7) all slipping from expansionary results in July. More reassuringly, new orders continued to grow in August, if at a slower pace (down 7.3 points to 51.5), suggesting a correction to a mismatch between production and sales. Readings below 50 indicate contraction in activity, with the distance from 50 indicating the strength of the decrease. “At 46.9 the August result for the Australian PMI is the lowest since June 2015 when it was 44.2 points,” said Ai Group Chief Executive, Innes Willox. “These low results ‘bookend’ a run of 13 months of expansion (July 2015 to July 2016 inclusive). A sharp fall in food & beverages in August, which had been the mainstay of recent growth, was a major factor in the correction seen in…