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Chrome-plated decorative panels with 3D lettering in two different matt finishes that also glow in different colors at night have only been available in series production from a German OEM for a few weeks. The changing day-night design – the haptics above the 3D lettering by day, the illuminated color selected by the driver at night – is an eyecatching feature, at a time when customisable interior ambience is currently a trend among OEMs. Dr Carsten Brockmann, KTB’s Managing Director, is enthusiastic about the new design: “This greatly increases the value of the interior design. This day-night design also allows further customisation of the car’s interior. The panel’s surface and contour lighting gives us a new design element that appeals to the senses.” Using a multi-component injection moulding process, KTB manufactures components of polycarbonate (PC) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and finishes them in…

The question businesses need to ask is whether they are ready for digital transformation, and whether they’ll find themselves forging ahead, or falling behind? It’s time discuss how manufacturers can better prepare themselves for Industry 4.0 and take that all important step of digitising their manufacturing facilities. Kevin Dherman, SYSPRO’s Chief Innovation Officer, believes the best way to prepare your business for Industry 4.0 is to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that can pave the way for digitisation by providing real, working solutions that will enable manufacturers and distributors to leverage on new technologies and trends that are shaping and redefining the competitive landscape. For this reason the SYSPRO team has worked hard to ensure that they have embedded the most pragmatic and useful features and functionality of Industry 4.0 into their latest ERP release.…

The size of the Australian continent, its geographically dispersed population base and the importance of major commodities to its economic output means that freight transport sector performance has a significant influence on national productivity and efficiency. Figures surrounding the industry are significant. Trucking handles more cargo than trains, ships or planes, carrying more than 2,100 million tons. Moreover, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics the trucking industry is worth over $40bn and employs 140,00 Australians. Trucks are an essential part of our economy. Without trucks, goods would never get from suppliers to manufacturers and into the hands of consumers. Just as the economy depends on the trucking industry, the trucking industry depends on high-quality equipment. Kenworth Australia has built a reputation around superior-quality, custom-engineered trucks with proven reliability over 47 years of local manufacturing. It manufactures around 2,200 trucks every year for delivery, and has the largest amount of 2015 models on the market. So, when Kenworth was faced with a late design change that threatened the production timeline of…

I found myself sitting down to talk to Jacob Harpaz in the cafeteria at Iscar’s head office in Tefen, Israel. Chatting with Harpaz, you would never think you were talking to a man responsible for more than 12,000 employees in 140 subsidiaries and 61 countries. He’s perfectly pleasant and charismatic, with achievements to his name few in Israel can match; yet he isn’t a spotlight-seeker. Nevertheless, he has shaped his company like no other since joining in 1972, 20 years after its foundation by Stef Wertheimer, who had the foresight and vision to challenge an established industry. Iscar’s humble beginnings in an old shack in Nahariya, Israel, along with intense, hard work and commitment to continued innovation, have led Iscar to become an industry leader today. Since 1982, Harpaz and Wertheimer’s son, Eitan Wertheimer, have run the company from one of the most rural and remote corners of the country, far from the commercial capital Tel Aviv. Harpaz’s office offers a commanding view…

Walk into most any machine shop and there’s a good chance you’ll hear it: the high pitch whine of a deep boring operation, the chatter loud enough to have even the most hard of hearing among us scrambling for a pair of ear plugs. It’s a problem that has plagued machinists since the day that Henry Maudslay  (1771 – 1831), the inventor of the lathe, first chucked up a piece of steel and tried to bore a hole through it. And the problem has only become worse as metals have grown tougher and more challenging to machine. But not anymore, according to Kennametal. Its new boring system boasts the most effective anti-chatter mechanism that the company has ever developed, and it also offers an extensive range of indexable heads and shank sizes. Creating a vibration-free zone Someone who knows all about this is Sam Eichelberger, a Product Engineer for lathe systems engineering at Kennametal, and part of the team that developed the internal dampening mechanism. “Perhaps the most important thing to know…

Lasers can be used for a myriad of tasks and situations: attached to a robot arm, or on the side of a bottling line, or inside a protective chamber for 3D printing metal parts. This wide variation in applications requires expert installation, support and training to ensure effective incorporation of the laser system. Sometimes, Raymax is presented with the challenge of a ‘never done before’ solution: a new application or use for a laser system. “These are the challenges we love,” says John Grace, Managing Director of Raymax.“We not only get to apply our knowledge and skill, but we are giving the user an opportunity to do something they could never have done before, and that’s pretty satisfying for everyone.” Lasers provide the opportunity to innovate, change and improve processes. For example, materials-processing applications such as welding, cutting and cladding in fields as diverse as consumer electronics, automotive manufacturing and defence, are now dominated by industrial lasers. This uptake changes traditional processes, influenced by the…

NSW is the state for manufacturing, accounting for around 30% of Australia’s total manufacturing output. Manufacturing employs 7% of the NSW workforce, and Western Sydney is the key driver of the advanced manufacturing sector. Australian manufacturing is predominantly a SME market, with 24,319 firms having fewer than 19 employees, 1,663 with 20-199 employees, and only 164 with more than 200 employees. While the infrastructure boom currently sweeping NSW is set to enhance the state’s economy, the paradox is that the SME manufacturing sector is suffering a skills gap within both ‘blue collar’ and ‘new collar’ workers as a direct result. A survey conducted by Business Chambers found that 63.3% of participants who owned manufacturing businesses reported a perception of a skills shortage. Kevin Adler,…

GJS Managing Director John Rees has been at the helm throughout, and he and GJS’ software engineers have worked directly with businesses to be sure that their Job Commander solutions have been formed with the input of customers, answering the special needs of the engineering industry. Job Commander is a simple-to-use job costing system that produces quotes, schedules, purchase orders, job cards, delivery dockets and invoices, all personalised for the client. The quoting software allows faster, more accurate quotes by drawing on data from previous jobs and enabling storage of job-specific electronic documentation that is easily retrieved. Job Commander’s integration with MYOB, XERO and QuickBooks avoids double handling of data and reduces accounting costs. Job Commander has taken over a decade to develop with extensive industry research, testing and substantial investment by the company. Rees says: “This has resulted in a powerful, easy to use, and innovative suite of software tools that a client can install…

Global robotics and logistics automation technology leader Swisslog has found that as automation accelerates, a common concern is that if a machine goes offline, the entire system suffers. But this is becoming less and less of a problem through synchronised automation, which is a natural evolution of islands of automation, explains Martin Kohl, Senior Consultant at Swisslog. Kohl has more than 18 years experience in global logistics automation. He says that the megatrends driving digitalisation and industry 4.0 – such as urbanisation, an ageing society, increased health focus, e-commerce, increasingly digital lives and regulations – mean that better technology utilisation is needed to optimise supply chains and achieve tangible benefits. From islands of automation to synchronised automation “The concept of islands of automation means users can have several automated processes working in isolation, which can be linked up with Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs), with end-to-end integration,” says Kohl. “Swisslog takes this one step further with its synchronised automation systems. The technologies are still separate,…

When anyone talks about advanced manufacturing, there’s a tendency to think of certain definitively modern, high-tech applications: aerospace parts, medical devices, maybe smart-phone components. But arguably one of the oldest segments in advanced manufacturing is often overlooked: watchmaking. People first started wearing portable timepieces some 500 years ago, and ever since, watchmaking has been a key driver of technological development and innovation, combining engineering challenges around accuracy and reliability, with a critical focus on aesthetic design. Moreover, the history of watchmaking is characterised by disruption. Much has been made of the impact of smart-watches in recent years, but that battle has been going on since the ‘Quartz Crisis’ of the 1970s, when cheap, mass-produced electronic watches overturned the Swiss-led dominance of traditional mechanical watches. And yet, lots of people still recoil at the idea of wearing a miniaturised smart-phone on their wrists, and will pay a premium for something more classical. So traditional mechanical watchmaking endures, a craft sustained largely by dedicated independent practitioners. Nicholas…

Formula One racing is an endurance engineering sport fuelled by relentless innovation. Teams work tirelessly to reach and beat an ever-evolving standard of peak performance, and the spirit is no different at Renault Sport Formula One Team. There, the R&D machine never stops and the contributions of technical partners play a crucial role in helping the organisation reach its targets. “Race after race, new components made of complex composites and aerospace alloys see the light after surviving a harsh selection in the R&D and simulation labs,” explains Renault Sport Formula One Technical Director, Nick Chester. “At the end of a racing season, we expect our race car to be in excess of a second per lap quicker than when we started, and our technical partners have to survive the same ruthless selection. We aren’t interested in relationships that don’t bring value in our quest for performance.” This requirement for ongoing innovation and active collaboration is the foundation for Renault Sport Formula One Team’s choice of 3D…

Founded in 1978 by Michael Byrnes – still the company’s owner and chairman – Anglade completes all work in-house, including design, drafting, manufacture, electrical, pneumatics, hydraulics and PLC programming, with capabilities in CNC milling, CNC turning, wire EDM and precision grinding. Using the latest high-end machines, this 40 year-old, second-generation family company designs and manufactures specialist injection, blow, vacuum, thermos vacuum and polystyrene moulds, along with press tools, special-purpose machines, jigs, fixtures and gauges for a broad range of clients quickly and efficiently. Michael and his son David Byrnes – now the company’s general manager – have built up an impressive range of machines and equipment, such as the Okuma MB66VA S15 OSP-P200M vertical machining centre and Fanuc Robocut Alpha 1iD 310isWA, to meet the ever-changing demands for precision components. This has won them work on some impressive projects, including providing parts for two ambitious CSIRO radio telescopes. Anglade was commissioned to manufacture ortho-mode transducers (OMTs) and other specialised components…

One recent achievement, bringing ANCA’s AR300 SCARA robot arm and control system to market, took collaboration between the company, its suppliers and customers, and university researchers. The project dates back to 2014, when the ANCA noticed an unmet need for flexible automation for tool loading. Developing a local solution, instead of importing robot hardware, might also have applicability in a variety of other industries. “As a local contributor to advanced manufacturing, we’re continually looking for ways to grow,” explains Tom Nathan, New Products Development Manager at ANCA CNC Machines. Moreover Nathan adds that these opportunities can’t always be pursued, and there are times when the cost of engineering in Australia can cruel a business case. Another difficulty is quite simply that “robotics is hard”. This well-known adage has been very much in evidence over the last few months, following the demise of promising US robotics businesses Jibo, Mayfield and Rethink Robotics. The challenge of creating a robot from scratch is a daunting…