IMTS Insider
The IMTS Insider is your one-stop destination for updates about the show, as well as information on business solutions, manufacturing technology advances, marketing & sales tips, professional development, and industry events. Check your inbox each month for the latest edition!
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4 Ridiculous Ways Manufacturing is Portrayed in the Media
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Oct 11, 2021
AMT – The Association for Manufacturing Technology’s gurus have an ax to grind — and some myths to bust. Check out their list of inaccurate portrayals of manufacturing in the media.
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Digital Thread Explained: Its Promise in Manufacturing - Part I
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Oct 4, 2021
Gain an overview of the digital thread in manufacturing operations: how it works, the potential value it provides, its current status within the industry, and the challenges to achieving a fully integrated thread.
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Digital Thread Explained: Its Integration Challenges - Part II
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Oct 4, 2021
Will the successful standardization and integration of data into a digital thread at most manufacturing companies be closely linked to collaboration with major technology companies or will the industry need to develop its own solutions? Industry leaders share their perspectives.
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Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials Invisibly Creeping Into Industry
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Sep 27, 2021
Just when you thought you’d seen it all, you find out that nanomaterials are everywhere, including industrial manufacturing. What are they? How does nanotechnology work? Why is it valuable? Learn the basics about this growing field at the intersection of the physical, chemical, and biological worlds – but too small to see! Some measure less than 100 billionths of a meter.
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Five Manufacturing Tech Trends to Watch
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Sep 17, 2021
Tech trends aren’t just fun; they’re important. Get up to speed on all the manufacturing technology trends to watch with AMT – The Association for Manufacturing Technology’s gurus.
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Emerging Technologies Continue to Make Inroads into Manufacturing
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Sep 7, 2021
Take a look at how artificial intelligence (AI), machine vision, and sensors are bringing gains in flexibility and efficiency to the movement of parts in facilities and how exoskeletons are increasing worker endurance in repetitive physical tasks.
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When Failure Is Not an Option
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Sep 3, 2021
COSM Advanced Manufacturing Systems is building a wire-feed 3D metal printer to be used in outer space for NASA’s Artemis moon missions. The technology developed for use up there may also benefit critical, large-scale components used down here by overcoming one of the fundamental barriers to widespread AM adoption.
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How will blockchain change manufacturing?
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Aug 13, 2021
Joel Neidig, CEO and founder of SIMBA Chain, Inc., believes that in the future manufacturing and distribution will look far different than today’s “centralized industrial complex,” and will take place instead at the point of use for the consumer. Learn more about the changes he foresees and the role that blockchain will play.
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Will AM Companies Continue to Choose SPACs?
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Aug 5, 2021
Why have the number of firms going public via mergers with special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) quadrupled since 2019? AM manufacturer Desktop Metal completed a very financially successful SPAC merger in December 2020. Since then, several other AM companies announced their plans to go public through this route in 2021, including Markforged, Xometry, and Velo3D. Learn more about SPACs, how they work, and if one might work for your business.
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Generative Design Keeps Manufacturability in Mind
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Aug 5, 2021
Can generative design do more than just offer geometric form solutions? See how it can help engineers earlier in the workflow explore a wider cross-set of potential solutions and introduce manufacturability early in the engineering process.
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Market Disruptor Protolabs Innovates in Low Volume Manufacturing
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Jul 7, 2021
Market disruptor Protolabs built its business by focusing on both speed and low volume in producing parts for customers. They saw that prototype and low volume-custom parts manufacturing was an underserved market and set out to meet this market need. We overview the company’s success and drill down into some of the details of its business model.
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Why You Should Care About Deep Reinforcement Learning
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Jul 1, 2021
OSARO has pioneered the use of AI software in industrial systems to expand the range of applications for robotics. The company helps automate the process of accurately seeing, picking, and placing objects. Learn what’s possible and how smart robots make it happen.
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Digital Twin: What, Where, & Why
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Jun 30, 2021
Here’s the lowdown on how a virtual representation uses simulation and machine learning to help you gain insight into the performance and potential problems of a manufacturing process – enabling products to be digitally designed and tested before being physically produced.
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Portable 3D Scanners Take the Floor
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Jun 29, 2021
3D scanning technology is shop-floor ready. Portable 3D scanners ensure good parts before they go out, or, even better, before they reach end of production.
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Inspection Inside and Out: CT Scanning for Metal Parts
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Jun 25, 2021
Quality assurance of AM-produced metal parts may be the greatest obstacle affecting the speed of their adoption. Powders, print processes, and final parts are subject to a level of variability in terms of chemical and mechanical quality that cannot be tolerated in a production environment. Review the key quality issues and learn how non-destructive Computed Tomography (CT) scanning is used to address them.
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The Expanding Role of Cobots in Manufacturing
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Jun 21, 2021
The market for collaborative robots, aka cobots, in manufacturing is growing rapidly. Advances in sensors, artificial intelligence, machine vision, and light detection and ranging (LiDAR), among other technologies, are making cobots easier to program, less expensive to deploy, and increasingly flexible in the types of tasks they can safely perform. This article overviews the main features and benefits of these flexible manufacturing tools.
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Understanding Digital Twins & How Standards Can Enable Them
Category: Manufacturing Technology • Jun 21, 2021
In his presentation “Manufacturing Digital Twins: Understanding Digital Twins and How Standards Can Enable Them,” Jan de Nijs, LM Fellow for Enterprise Digital Production, Lockheed Martin, reviews the formal definition of the digital twin according to the ISO 23247 standard and explains why it is important to ask oneself what it is one wants to accomplish with a digital twin (DT) when defining it. He illustrates these points with several DT use cases and closes with an overview of the importance of industry standards to the DT.
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A Brief History of Automation Technology - 1
Category: Manufacturing Technology • May 26, 2021
Automation technology used in industry has evolved from conveyor belts used since the late 19th century to automated material handling (AMH) systems that provide multiple types of movement and functionality to robotic arms, which continue to grow in use as prices come down and advanced end-of-arm tooling (EOAT) and sensors expand their functionality and intelligence.
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End of Arm Tooling for Robotic Arms - 2
Category: Manufacturing Technology • May 26, 2021
Recent advancements in end of arm tooling (EOAT) have made robotic arms increasingly useful throughout manufacturing. In this article, we review three of the most important types of EOAT: grippers, vision technology and sensors, and how they expand the functionality of robotic arms.
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Evolution of Robotics - 3
Category: Manufacturing Technology • May 26, 2021
The two categories of robots used in manufacturing are industrial grade robots and collaborative robots (cobots); adaptive robots were only introduced in 2019. This article looks at how each new generation of robots is more flexible and intelligent than its predecessor.
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