Member News

It’s Not Funny (INF) is a collection of people with Parkinson’s disease celebrating the positive aspects rather than dwelling on the negatives. The INF team thought it would be a great idea to make a dashboard wobbly doll, as a good representation of a positive attitude to living with the condition. “We wanted to create a wobbly doll, Australian-made and with a genuine look to it, somehow linking it back to real people and Parkinson’s,” says John Peplow of INF. “I investigated getting a doll made but soon realised this was a mammoth exercise. I soon realised that getting a 3D scan and a 3D print was not that easy. Not because of the technique, but because I was confronted with a maze of unsuccessful attempts until I found someone who knew what they were talking about.” That someone was Shane Rolton, Managing Director from Wysiwyg 3D, who listened to the idea with interest, in part because his grandfather had Parkinson’s. Rolton saw an opportunity to…

The real stalwarts of the manufacturing industry have a clear understanding that there is always a fine balancing act between being a well-established brand that is known to many, and being recognised as sitting at the cutting edge of innovation. A privately owned company, Décor Engineering has managed to achieve this delicate balance, elevating it to an enviable position as an industry leader within its own specific niche. Based in the bayside suburb of Seaford, in Melbourne’s south-east, Décor has strong, long-established foundations in the Australian car manufacturing industry. The company began life in 1970, back in the days when there were no fewer than five car manufacturers operating in Australia. Those five car-makers all required hundreds of different parts that needed masking and painting, so Anton Derlet set up Décor to meet that need. Derlet began his business operating out of his garden shed in the early days, before moving to a factory site a year later as it became clear the fledgling company would…

Founded by Mark and Janice Hooper 22 years ago, Jmar specialises in component manufacturing and repairs across a broad range of industries including those associated with conveyor and package handling equipment. A commitment to providing outstanding customer service, staying abreast of local trends, and ongoing diversification has seen the company achieve steady growth and increase its customer base since its inception. An example of that diversification has been the way the company now undertakes a considerable amount of ‘reverse engineering’ – fabricating many components and parts that clients may have previously bought from overseas suppliers. In addition to component manufacturing, the company has been a supplier to the agricultural industry for more than 20 years with a unique product called the Christopher Dairy Bails. This is a retrofit product suitable for herringbone dairies that allows the farmer to feed in the bail at milking time. Nearly all Jmar’s business comes from around the Goulburn Valley area within a 50km radius of Shepparton. Last year Mark spotted an opportunity to invest in a laser cutter to further grow his business…

Australia’s premier advanced manufacturing and machine tool exhibition, Austech 2017 will take place at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from 9-12 May 2017. As always, Austech will include an exciting range of special features, including specialised areas such as the Additive and Digital Manufacturing Pavilion and Manufacturer’s Pavilion. Preparations for the show are already in full swing, and a number of companies have already signed up as exhibitors. To ensure that the floor space is allocated fairly, AMTIL has always held a ballot among the companies who register early. There is still time to register as an Austech exhibitor and be included the in the ballot. It pays to book early and maximise your pre-show exposure. The Austech ballot is divided into groups: the first ballot includes exhibitors applying for 144sqm or…

Industry is demanding that materials be lighter, tougher, thinner, denser and more flexible or rigid, as well as heat- and wear-resistant. At the same time, researchers are pushing the boundaries of what we imagine is possible, seeking to improve and enhance existing materials and at the same time come up with completely new materials that, while years away from day-to-day use, take us down entirely new technological pathways. Based on the research we’re seeing today, the field of applied material science is set to move in new, almost science-fiction-like directions. Looming resource scarcity is demanding innovations and out-of-the-box thinking. On the materials front, composites with desirable attributes such as low weight, high strength and high durability look likely to take a larger market share, and more of these materials will likely be based on renewable resources, as the need for this becomes greater. The most promising jewel in this…

Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) is commonly used for efficiency estimation. OEE is a function of Equipment Availability (A) and Equipment Performance (P), both expressed as percentages, and is calculated as follows: OEE = A x P Availability (A) reflects the impact of production time losses, and can be calculated as the ratio of the actual availability (the production time when equipment is making products) against the target availability (the production time originally scheduled): A = Aactual / Atarget Target availability is calculated as a time interval (usually in minutes) between the start and the finish of the scheduled production time, minus planned breaks for set-up, preventive maintenance, cleaning, lunch breaks and so on. Actual availability is calculated as the target availability, minus unplanned production time losses (such as equipment downtime and breakdowns). When actual time for planned activity (e.g. set-up) exceeds the allocated time, excess becomes a downtime. For example if 15 minutes is allowed for the line set-up and it actually took…

Make it Cheaper has looked at power bills for 33 customers and a total of 56 meters. Those 56 meters were split across Commercial & Industrial, SME and Residential – Make It Cheaper is capable of offering advice and quotations across all three of these markets. Where it is possible to make an actual prediction of retrospective savings based on usage and the availability of the bill to perform a full bill comparison, the company has been able to save AMTIL members a total of $18,793 per year. Across the SME market this averages at $1,708 per meter switched where a better deal has been identified, and the highest estimated savings come in at a whopping $7,218. The even better news is that there are still many, many members of AMTIL that haven’t yet taken advantage of this great service. Remember this service is free, and realistically it will take five to ten minutes of your time. Of course, time is always tight, and your…

Long-time AMTIL member Archer Enterprises, a precision engineering firm based in Somersby, NSW, is one company that has observed a noticeable drop in the standard of project management across a number of industries, and it is having a negative impact on product development. “We’re aware that companies have been downsizing since the GFC and now we are seeing the consequences of that change,” says Archer’s Operations Director Russell Byrne. “The people who drove product development and managed it properly, the technicians and the project managers, are missing.” Byrne adds that without people filling those strategic roles, the quality of project scopes of work has worsened. “We are seeing junior staff, project officers and in some cases senior executives who don’t have the right technical or management skills being given responsibility to run projects,” he explains. “They approach us with ill-informed intentions and minimal information. We do step in and guide them; that is a normal part of our technology relationship. But the added assistance they require from us has sometimes meant rewriting the scope of…

Although tapping remains the most common internal threading generation process, the highly efficient thread milling technique has ended tapping’s dominance of as the main method of cutting threads in relatively small diameter holes. Even though tapping is considered highly productive with some obvious pros, this traditional method also has evident cons. The main problem encountered when performing tapping is chip evacuation. A long chip can clog the flute of a tap, which may cause the tap to break in a hole, and possibly cause an entire machined part to be scrapped. However, when performing thread milling, effective chip evacuation is achieved without difficulty. Material hardness is another common impediment to efficient tapping. Although the majority of today’s taps are not suitable for machining hard materials, thread mills produced from solid carbide considerably expand the range of hard materials that are able to be tapped. Thread milling delivers outstanding versatility. For instance, a single multiple-form thread mill is able…

The coaxial welding cladding head allows complete X/Y/Z-direction independent cladding with filler wire. Based on a unique internal optical design, it splits in half, then rejoins the beam at the cladding position and is combined with the coaxial feeding of the additional filler wire material. The wire is then fused from all directions at the local melt pool to the base substrate. In comparison to laser cladding with powder, a very high material efficiency is possible, since the additional material is introduced and processed at 100%. The process is also cleaner, highly stable and simple to integrate and adjust. The homogenous energy distribution in the fully circular focus enables a large process window, which results in a stable process, even if the working distance fluctuates a little. This proves advantageous particularly for the construction of free-formed 2.5D structures. The Precitec CoaxCladder allows application across a wide range of fields, such as the repair of high-value components, adding specialised wear-resistance coatings, or the building of high-volume structures. The efficient process allows very high processing speeds, up to 5m per…

Mining, so long a key driver of Australia’s economic prosperity, has hit a slow patch. The boom of the 2000s is long passed. Following a wave of investment in construction and equipment, the industry has entered a production and sustainment phase, employing fewer workers and spending less. In 2014-15, revenue and exports both dropped substantially, as increased production resulted in global oversupply and depressed commodity prices. However, grounds for optimism remain. According to the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science’s Resources and Energy Quarterly for the March Quarter, Australia’s resources and energy sector enjoys broadly positive prospects in the medium-to-long term. Earnings from exports are forecast to decline by 7% to $160bn in 2015-16, but will average annual growth of 3% to 2020-2021, reaching $208bn in real terms. Although challenging market conditions are likely to persist in the short term, consumption of most commodities is projected to increase as Asian economies urbanise. The post-boom years have to some degree forced Australian mining to up its game. Mining companies and manufacturers supplying…

A previous edition of AMT magazine included a first-rate article on how software systems such as ERP platforms assist businesses in driving innovation. Done correctly they do; and I am sure that the majority of business today would agree with this. However, most business are also faced with conflicting messages and confusion in regard to ERP success. To add to the drama, in 2013 Gartner told us that 75% of all ERP projects fail and more recently have stated that until 2018 that 80% of enterprises will lack the capability to successfully deliver a “postmodern” ERP strategy – “postmodern” representing a fundamental shift away from a single-vendor (on-premise) mega-suite, toward a more loosely coupled, federated and cloud-based ERP environment. Consequently, when businesses embark on an ERP project the fear of choosing poorly has a profound effect on both the length of time and quality of the ERP selection and evaluation process –so much so that we actually have a term for…

AMT: How did Bolts & Industrial Supplies start out in the industry? Andrew Rodgers: Bolts & Industrial Supplies has been in business for over 40 years. Incorporated in 1973 by founding partner John Rodgers, the business is still in the Rodgers family to this day. Since then we’ve served the engineering community of Australia with a strong sense of pride and customer service that simply cannot be beaten. The company has been moulded into what it is today by providing high-quality Australian-made products at a respectable price, top-notch service and reliable, timely delivery. No matter which industry you’re in – aerospace, automotive, die & mould, general engineering, construction or just day-to-day hardware – we’ve got you covered with a tool to suit your needs. We have over 60 staff specialising in various fields, working hand in hand with over 200 suppliers, providing the best technical information possible to enhance performance and productivity. AMT: And what about more recent developments? AR:…