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Mrs Pilz visited Australia in late August and affirmed that Pilz’s Australian business has the potential to be a local powerhouse of engineering. Pilz Australia is headquartered in Melbourne, with offices in Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland, providing sales and logistics, along with turnkey engineering projects to the local market. Pilz Australia forms part of the Asia Pacific region for Pilz, where it has high expectations for growth, in line with business doubling in five years to nearly $100m, accounting for 20% of company revenue. Australia was part of the company’s first foray outside Europe in 1998, when it launched subsidiaries in Australia, Brazil and Japan – with Australia seen as a forerunner into the Asia Pacific market. Australia has a safety culture that matches Europe’s – in particular Germany – which leads the world in safety products and services. Pilz came to world-wide acclaim as the pioneer of the Emergency Stop – that red button you see on machinery…

AMT: Tell us a little bit about how METS Ignited was founded and and what you do. Ric Gros: The Australian Government, as part of its Industry Development and Innovation Policy Framework, has established Industry Growth Centres in six sectors that are considered strategically important to the Australian Economy. The METS sector was chosen as one of these segments because of its composition of agile, entrepreneurial SMEs, global competitiveness and growth potential based on Australia’s recognised research capabilities and scale, and its leading-edge mining sector. Australia’s METS sector is globally connected and financially robust. Contributing $86bn gross value to the Australian economy and supporting half a million jobs, the METS sector plays a significant role in the nation’s prosperity. Over 55% of Australian METS companies are exporters and many are world leaders in their markets. Further, the emerging Industry 4.0 will provide a new wave of opportunities for the METS sector. It is the role of METS Ignited to work closely with industry to increase collaboration, implement initiatives that will accelerate…

AMT: What is the Industry Capability Network actually and what are its objectives? Don Matthews: ICN Victoria has been operating since 1984 and is best described as a business network which links Victorian and Australian manufacturers – specifically small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – into projects. So in many ways we sit between a buyer on the one hand and a supplier on the other hand, and we look to connect them based on capability and project requirements. Effectively, our whole aim is to increase the number of manufacturers in Victoria that are participating in those projects so that the work does not go offshore. Our primary reason for being is to facilitate the Victorian Industry Participation Policy (VIPP) on behalf of the State Government and as such, we are a not-for-profit body. All states and territories – bar Tasmania and New Zealand – have an ICN, and there is a co-ordinating group out of Canberra called ICN Limited (ICNL). AMT: Tell us a bit more about the activities you’re engaged in. DM: Our VIPP team assesses…

Tristan Opie is the third-generation CEO of the family-owned company, based in Emu Plains, New South Wales. In 2010, following a quiet few months of business, Tristan invested in a TRUMPF TruLaser Tube 7000 cutting machine, in a move that he described as “a very risky step at that time”. “Just a very few customers realised the possibilities opened up by using the laser to work tubes,” he explains. “But I was sure there was a market for this service. The laser has major advantages as it replaces several steps in the workflow process. In addition, our TruLaser Tube 7000 is so fast that we can achieve considerably lower costs per item.” Opie Group admits that it was a while before the machine turned a profit, but the company’s perseverance was rewarded. Today, no other machine on the shopfloor can compete with the TRUMPF TruLaser Tube 7000 in terms of its utilisation rates. Two TruLaser Tube 7000s and a TruMatic 6000 punch laser machine augment the equipment at the factory, where automation is key. A TRUMPF LiftMaster loading and…

The skills challenge attracted 16 teams of researchers from ten countries to compete. Two teams represented Australia, with teams tasked to build their own hardware and software to successfully pick and stow items in a warehouse. While Amazon is able to quickly package and ship millions of items to customers from their network of fulfillment centers, the commercial technologies to solve automated picking in unstructured environments are yet to be developed. Eight teams made it through to the finals, with the ACRV placing fifth after the picking and stowing rounds. “It was a tense few hours,” according to the Centre’s COO Dr Sue Keay, “Our team top scored early with 272 points on the final combined stowing-and-picking task, but we then had to wait on the results for five other teams, many of whom had outperformed us in the rounds, before it became clear that we had won.” “Not bad for a robot that was only…

“What we’ve used so far is fibreglass and the carbon fibre. Basically to help make our parts a little more rigid – especially some of our drill jigs,” says Joseph Walters, New Product Design Engineer at Arow Global. “We’ll do carbon fibre inlay around the corners that stiffens the part up to the point that it’s as stiff as aluminium, but it’s also a lot lighter than aluminium.” Everyday, Walters and the rest of the Arow team know that they made the right call – 3D-printed composite materials can affordably provide the mechanical properties that Arow could previously only obtain with machined metal. A few months prior, Walters had been faced with a dilemma – to deliver robust, affordable tools and fixtures, as well as to prototype new design concepts for Arow. His best choice was to outsource parts to a CNC machine shop — using Arow’s own CNC equipment would divert essential production resources. Yet, the cost was still too high and the time…

The quest for reducing levels of power consumption in the global metal cutting sector is not a new trend; today it has become an essential technical requirement. Industry’s greater understanding of its environmental protection and sustainability responsibilities has ensured the development of processes, materials and machines that significantly reduce power consumption during machining operations. In addition to ensuring more efficient machining strategies, when compared to their heavy-duty predecessors, modern machining centres require less power while delivering improved performance capabilities. Previously, a typical production process was divided into primary and final cutting tasks that were performed on two machines. The first powerful machine removed most of the stock, and a more precise procedure was then used to achieve the final required shape and to create the necessary surface finish. Today, a single process often achieves these results in half the time.…

Avtech manufactures precision components and tools for companies that supply the subsea, mining and resources industries. It also produces parts for local and international manufacturers of CNC machinery, and for industrial safety switch component businesses. Nonetheless, according to Avtech’s owner and Managing Director Steve Delfos, the extractive sector inevitably casts a major influence on local manufacturing. “Being WA-based, most manufacturers are connected somehow to the mining industry,” he says. “Avtech makes components for the companies that manufacture products for the mining, oil & gas industry. We produce tools to support exploration and drilling areas for mining. This includes ‘down-the-hole’ equipment and tools used in the surveying of drilled holes.” For its oil & gas industry clients, Avtech produces various traceable components for subsea, maintenance, exploration, production and recovery tools. These will end up being used worldwide by some of the largest subsea companies. “We also precision manufacture cylinders, rams, manifolds and valve blocks for the hydraulics industry and cases, standoffs, brackets, chassis and…

This can be remedied by using structural parts for machinery that are made of lightweight fibre-reinforced materials. This entails mastering some serious obstacles, as evidenced by an as-yet-uncompleted research project at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology (IPT) in Aachen, Germany, which will also be on show at the EMO 2017 trade fair in Hannover . CFRP replaces steel for enhanced dynamics The researchers in Aachen usually adopt a holistic approach to optimising designs. In other words: they consider the machine’s design as a coherent whole, thus also including the development of important drive elements in the machine tool. They have currently joined forces with Magdeburg-based machine tool manufacturer MAP Werkzeugmaschinen to examine how an innovative machine component for vertical movements (Z-axis) made of carbon-fibre-reinforced plastic (CFRP) behaves in a machine tool and how the Z-slide can be optimised. “We began development work on the CFRP slide in…

VCI’s State of Play report surveyed over 800 leaders from 321 companies in the global mining industry and uncovered that while the majority (66%) of Australian mining executives say their companies are prepared for digitisation, only 26% are focussing on innovation plans that extend beyond just three years. Despite nearly all (98%) Australian mining company leaders indicating innovation is ‘important’ or ‘critical’ to their long-term business strategy, when it came to their company’s focus on a long-term strategy, Australia ranked last in the globe – trailing other major mining regions including South Africa (63%), India (38%) and North America (32%). Surprisingly, since the survey began in 2013, the timeframe for long-term innovation focus in Australian companies has actually dropped by more than half from 2013 (59%) to 2017 (26%). So, why is an industry that contributes nearly $100bn to the Australian economy each year lagging the rest…

Preparations for the show are now entering their final stages, with work now underway at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre to ensure everything is ready when the event begins on Tuesday. It marks the culmination of a long and complicated process in making Austech a reality, with the exhibition space fully booked well in advance, and pre-registrations from prospective visitors already very strong. According to AMTIL Event Manager and Austech organiser Kim Banks, the enthusiasm shown both by exhibitors and by people planning to visit the show, is indicative of an willingness across the industry to invest and build for the future. “We’ve definitely seen a big surge in confidence this time round,” says AMTIL Event Manager and Austech organiser Kim Banks. “We saw bookings come in a lot earlier than usual, filling the venue way ahead of schedule. What’s also very exciting is the number of exhibitors who are coming back to the show after not participating for the last few years. It’s all looking very exciting.” Held at…

Cutting tool data can in fact be gathered more accurately and used to create precise digital twin representations – a functionality that has become fundamental in the modern workflow to prevent errors at the machining stage. Today, such processes can be fully integrated with the user’s CAM software, and can be completed with a few simple clicks as part of an easy-to-use menu-driven process. In machining applications, it is not individual tool items such as toolholders, cutters and inserts that are used on machines, but tool assemblies. In many instances this creates a somewhat laborious task for the CAM programmer, where there exist several opportunities for error, not least failing to select the optimum tool items in the first instance. Furthermore, many typical tool assemblies can take up to an hour to create. With some components demanding the…

Manufacturing is entering a new era of rapid, drastic change. Often described as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it will see advances in areas such as robotics & automation, the interconnectivity of devices, big data and Cloud computing, that together will usher in the smart, connected factory of the future. “We’re constantly hearing about stuff like Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things and so on, but a lot of people are still in the dark about what it all means,” says AMTIL’s CEO and Exhibition Director Shane Infanti. “That’s why we decided to introduce the Digitalisation Pavilion at Austech this year. We felt a show like Austech is a great opportunity to bring together some of the key players and the latest technology in this field, so that people can come along and find out about it first-hand.” At the Digitalisation Pavilion visitors will have the chance to learn about the implications of these developments for their businesses, and discuss how they can capitalise on…