I recently blogged that restructuring of the American steel industry was a good model for US auto makers. Soon after, the New York Times suggested the same. Well, now I have another one: the American mold manufacturing industry. Ten years ago, US mold makers were under attack from Asian competitors who benefited from lower costs. Sure, the folks who owned those businesses were plenty scared, just as Rick Wagoner of GM is today. No one suggested that the mold makers should be bailed out, probably because they lacked size and clout. Despite that, the importance of tool building to the US economy could not be debated.
Many mold makers went out of business, particularly in Michigan. The ones that survived though are world competitive. One example is NyproMold, which now makes highly innovative products such as modular tooling and multi-shot spin stack tools. NyrpoMold uses the most productive and newest technologies, such as Laser Cusing and fluids flow analysis. And there are several more top-of-the-line American tool makers who didn’t just beg for a bailout. They adapted and grew.
It’s a long list that includes: Hi-Tech Mold & Engineering, Rochester Hills, MI; Triangle Tool Corp.,Milwaukee, WI: Rexam Mold Manufacturing, Buffalo Grove, IL; MSI Mold Builders, Cedar Rapids, IA; ABA-PGT, Manchester, CT; and Hi-Tech Mold & Tool, Pittsfield, MA. There’s also a long list of Canadian mold makers who are at the top of the competitive curve.
Interestingly, even the Asian tool makers are being tested by the newest breed of low-cost tool builders in India. Nokia and Motorola have both opened new plants there. The tool making will follow. Building tools for cell phones was once at the top of the technical food chain. Now it’s a commodity. The same is true for tools used to make inkjet cartridges for printers.
Make the auto manufacturers adapt and compete. No handouts. No bailouts.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
The 100-percent solar-powered Solar Impulse plane flies on a piloted, cross-country flight this summer over the US as a prelude to the longer, round-the-world flight by its successor aircraft planned for 2015.
GE Aviation expects to chop off about 25 percent of the total 3D printing time of metallic production components for its LEAP Turbofan engine, using in-process inspection. That's pretty amazing, considering how slow additive manufacturing (AM) build times usually are.
A $1,500, hand-operated, bench-model, plastic injection machine crowdsource-funded via Kickstarter can be used to mold small, quality, plastic parts inexpensively, on demand.
The federal government is launching competitions to kickstart three more manufacturing innovation institutes, including one focused on Lightweight and Modern Metals Manufacturing Innovation.
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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