Product News

Following years of research and development, in 2014, Markforged unveiled the first 3D printer capable of printing in continuous carbon fibre. Then, in 2015, Markforged unveiled its cloud-based 3D printing software, Eiger. Merging the advancements of its printers, materials, and software into one platform, Markforged established the Digital Forge: the intuitive Additive Manufacturing platform for modern manufacturers. Markforged now has a significant presence in Australia, after having no presence in the region five years ago. Through the use of demonstration centres in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane, local partners have been able to help customers boost in-house manufacturing efficiency and reduce dependency for parts on countries outside of Australia. Australian companies like Avicena, which produces more than 100 components of its Sentinel system in-house on Markforged printers, have adopted Markforged into its manufacturing processes to cut costs without affecting quality. Centor Global Services, a Brisbane-based manufacturer of high-end doors, utilises Markforged printers for the complex parts necessary to be a leader in its industry. For SQP, a family-owned and operated business located in Perth that provides…

Carbitool, known as “The Woodworking Masters,” is a company based in Australia that has been manufacturing carbide tools for the woodworking, cabinetry, joinery, furniture, timber, and panel industries for over 60 years. In 2018, Sutton Tools acquired Carbitool and now offers its services worldwide. Production Supervisor and regrind specialist, Michael Wilson, has over 25 years of experience in manufacturing and grinding special cutting tools at Carbitool. According to Wilson, Carbitool services all kinds of tooling, including metal cutting tools, woodworking tools, high-speed steel tools, carbide tools, and PCD tools. The company can also regrind all major brands of cutting tools and manufacture custom tools that are not available in the catalogue. Carbitool's services cater to various industries, such as aerospace, engineering, plastics, and more, and are available throughout Australia. “We pride ourselves on the quality of the regrinds but I also feel it's important to the customers that they have a quick turnaround of the tools,” said Wilson. “Previously what we've had to do is they would either get hand loaded during the day - so you can regrind one tool, and write the…

New purpose-built equipment added to Melbourne and San Diego facilities will help with clinical scale and global capacity shortages PCI Pharma Services (PCI), a leading global contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), has announced the operational launch of three new state-of-the-art automated sterile fill-finish machines at its Melbourne and San Diego facilities. “As the capacity for CDMOs worldwide to take on new projects shrinks, we’re excited to be able to offer integrated sterile fill-finish capabilities, alongside our clinical packaging facilities, to new and existing clients in Melbourne and San Diego,” said Brad Payne, Chief Operating Officer, PCI Pharma Services. “Our increased capacity, a stockpile of standardised components, including glass, and technical expertise means we can start running batches as soon as needed. This will cut down on the wait times many local biotech and pharmaceutical companies are facing and begin to help alleviate the global capacity shortage for sterile drug product and downstream packaging.” The new innovative machinery from Cytiva can be used to fill various sterile medications into vials and syringes for small-to-mid-scale client needs. The equipment, paired with PCI’s end-to-end services,…

Pacific Automation has announced a new Australian partnership with German manufacturer BERNSTEIN. This new national distribution deal makes BERNSTEIN switching safety and innovation available to all Australian industrial operators, along with technical support provided by Pacific Automation. “We’ve been supplying BERNSTEIN products since 2006, so our team is well familiarised with the quality of their products,” says Stephen Armstrong, CEO at Pacific Automation. “Our goal is to represent BERNSTEIN in Australia how they would represent themselves. That means ensuring that our customers receive high-quality customer service and technical support, just like they would from an OEM.” Key product ranges now accessible through this new partnership include: Limit switches • Door interlock switches • Safety rope pull switches. • Foot switches BERNSTEIN switches are utilised in factory automation and for machine and operator safety across the Australian industry. Their products are highly modular and can often be customised to suit the requirements of an individual customer or unique application. “We intend to keep growing and distribute our products around the globe. Therefore, we are pleased to have found a partner like Pacific…

Australia has an opportunity to develop a sovereign sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry, with domestic demand for jet fuel expected to increase by 75% by 2050, according to a new roadmap released recently by Australia's national science agency, CSIRO and Boeing Australia. Unlike conventional jet fuel, SAF is produced from renewable sources – like agricultural waste, animal fats and vegetable oils – and significantly reduces carbon emissions over the fuel’s life-cycle making it a more sustainable alternative for powering aircraft. The Sustainable Aviation Fuel Roadmap builds consensus on developing an Australian sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry, identifying opportunities to produce and scale production using Australian feedstocks. CSIRO Senior Manager and lead Roadmap author, Max Temminghoff, said Australia was in a prime position to develop a domestic industry. “By actively working to liberate feedstocks, the roadmap estimates that Australia is currently sitting on enough resources to produce almost five billion litres of SAF by 2025. This could supply nearly 60% of jet fuel demand projected for that year,” Mr Temminghoff…

The Royal Adelaide Hospital’s (RAH) fleet of 25 Automated Guidance Vehicles (AGVs) are responsible for distributing food, linen, waste, pharmaceuticals and stores, 24/7 365 days. The AGV system controls 14 dedicated lifts and services 31 lobbies over 9 floors, including 44 CSSD operating suites. The hospital aisles are shared with staff and other traffic therefore the on-board safety sensors allow the vehicles to avoid personal injury and damage to the payload, surrounding items and infrastructure. The new flexible AGV control system offers many benefits, such as lower operating costs, reduced transport damage and consistent delivery times. Customer requirements A hardware life cycle upgrade was required for the client’s existing fleet of 25 AGVs, located at the RAH. The existing AGV Control System also had limited support from the previous supplier. Technology had taken a significant step forward to a more modern, Window based, smart and easy-to-edit control software system. RA Health provided project consultancy from initial concept, through to design, implementation, and closure stages. MAXAGV confirmed the existing…

Great Wrap, a Melbourne-based material science company, launches the world's first Compostable Pallet Wrap, made with food waste, to combat the global reliance on petroleum-based pallet wrap and plastic pollution. The Tullamarine facility is home to what will soon be the largest stretch wrap manufacturer in the country. Great Wrap’s 10,000sqm facility in Tullamarine is home to state-of-the-art machinery that will make 5,000 tonnes of compostable stretch wrap in 2023 and 20,000 tonnes by 2025 — which will make them Australia’s largest stretch wrap manufacturer and significantly decreasing the need to import stretch wrap from other parts of the world. In this country alone, we send over 100,000 tonnes of stretch wrap to landfill each year, including cling wrap, catering wrap, silage wrap and pallet wrap. Pallet wrap, the connector of all businesses, is a critical part of the global supply chain. Every day millions of pallets are wrapped to transport goods to their eventual consumer. Unfortunately, very few facilities can recycle petroleum-based pallet wrap — meaning more than 90% goes to landfill. Great Wrap is home…

Unmanned vehicles are in something of a renaissance. UAVs have been patrolling the skies of militarily sensitive regions for more than a decade, and regulatory frameworks – to say nothing of the technology – are being hashed out between governments and manufacturers of autonomous road vehicles as we speak, including in Australia. Self-driving fleets of transport and public services vehicles have been mooted in the name of safety and efficiency, and unmanned mining and agriculture vehicles are already in use. One area we don't hear much about however is in unmanned sailing. After an estimated 11 billion tons of goods were shipped by sea in 2021 alone, it's an area you'd think was ripe for development, especially as the ocean is still so little understood when it comes to its influence on global climates and ecosystems. Saildrone is aiming to change that. The Alameda, California-based company builds, designs and operates uncrewed/unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) for a range of applications in scientific and commercial activities, sailing into the…

The ‘Australia’s Generative AI Opportunity’ report is a collaboration between Microsoft and the Tech Council of Australia. It’s contents says Australia’s manufacturing sector could unlock billions of dollars in value by 2030 if it accelerates the responsible adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GAI). The report shows that GAI could contribute between $45bn and $115bn a year to Australia’s economy by 2030 through two major channels: improving existing industries and enabling the creation of new products and services. Manufacturing has been identified as one of the four key sectors of the Australian economy poised to benefit from GAI. The report demonstrates that the technology could contribute between $2bn and $5bn annually to the manufacturing sector by 2030. TCA’s CEO says the report underscores the enormous economic potential of GAI for the manufacturing sector. However, Kate Pounder warned that the sector risks falling behind other industries in the adoption of this technology if it fails to accelerate its digital transformation. “Generative AI has the potential to redefine the industry, playing to Australia’s strengths of producing high-quality and highly technical products. But the sector needs…

Monash University startup ElectraLith is building an extraction system to filter Lithium from brine using a polymer-ceramic composite membrane, allowing the critical mineral to be extracted from salt lakes, mine tailings, and other brine solutions using small amounts of solar-generated electricity without added chemicals or water. Harnessing the power of cutting-edge electro-filtration membrane technology, ElectraLith seeks to usher in a new era of lithium extraction, propelling the battery market into a cleaner, cheaper, and faster future. At the forefront of this groundbreaking technology is Professor Huanting Wang. An Australian Laureate Fellow and the Director of the ARC Research Hub for Energy-efficient Separation at Monash University's Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. His pioneering work in nanostructure membranes has paved the way for ElectraLith's game-changing technology. “Current lithium extraction methods involve either roasting hard rock at high temperature and dissolving it with hot sulfuric acid or evaporating brines in a solar pond, both of which use chemicals to precipitate lithium out. It is time-consuming, disruptive, expensive, and wasteful. My research in nanostructure membranes is all about efficiency and ingenuity to make the most…

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed that Australia will export 100 Boxer armoured fighting vehicles to Germany, according to reports. The value to the economy is more than $1bn, making it one of the largest defence export deals in history. The vehicles, to be manufactured by Rheinmetall Defence Australia at its Military Vehicle Centre of Excellence in Brisbane, are eight-by-eight-wheeled, all-terrain, Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles (CRV). The Minister for Defence Industry, Pat Conroy and his German counterpart, the Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Defence Thomas Hitschler signed a Letter of Cooperation in March this year and began formal negotiations to manufacture and export the vehicles. Delivery is scheduled to begin in 2025. The sale was confirmed as Albanese landed in Europe enroute to the NATO summit as reported by AP. “This will increase our defence capability and boost our economy, this is a great outcome,” Albanese is quoted when asked during a brief doorstop. “And it’s the first outcome of quite a few that we have ready to announce tomorrow with our friends here in Germany.” The “schwerer Waffenträger Infanterie” (sWaTrInf, for…

Australia is one of the most wasteful developed nations, second only to the US in terms of per capita plastic bag consumption. On average, each Australian consumes over 24kg of plastic and uses over 230 plastic bags every year. In 2020, only 12% of the plastic waste was actually recycled and 81% went into landfills, with a lot of it ending up in waterways and the oceans. The 2021 National Plastics Plan (NPP) also says over one million tonnes of single-use plastics goes straight to landfill and about 130,000 tonnes of plastic leaches into Australian waterways and oceans every year. This is equivalent to 1,280 kg of plastic being dumped every hour in Australia’s ocean. National Geographic estimates there are 5.25 Trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean and of that mass, 269,000 tonnes float on the surface, while some four billion plastic microfibres per square kilometre litter the deep sea. Various waste technology solutions are emerging, and some behavioural changes are taking place, but is enough being done…

Plex, which Rockwell Automation acquired in 2021, is a Software as a Service (SaaS) Smart Manufacturing Platform that connects people, systems, machines, and supply chains. It is a digital system of record that automates business processes, tracks data from the shop floor to the top floor, and delivers analytics to improve visibility, quality, and control. Rockwell Automation recently released its 2023 State of Smart Manufacturing Report, which comprised data from thousands of manufacturers globally, including 75 in Australia. Rockwell found that more than 45% of Australian manufacturers say that they lack the innovation, skilled workforce, and technology to outpace the competition over the next 12 months. “Although smart manufacturing is key to Australia’s success, only 25% of the country’s manufacturing industry leaders said they were extremely familiar with the technologies,” said Anthony Wong, regional director – south pacific, Rockwell Automation. Plex opens up technologies to smaller players “Using Plex for food and beverage manufacturers and processors is like moving from DVDs to a streaming service. It opens up these technologies to smaller players, who don’t have to invest in large up-front costs. The good news is…