Advanced Manufacturing Now

At the Westec show in Long Beach, Calif., Cedric Hasenfratz, national sales manager at Zoller USA, explains what common challenges in manufacturing Zoller is determined to solve. He also goes over the company's approach to implementing tool-management solutions.

The Skills Gap in manufacturing is well documented. The question is what we are going to do about it. In this podcast, Alan Rooks, Editor in Chief of Manufacturing Engineering magazine, talks with Dean Steadman, CNC Education Program Manager for FANUC America, about how manufacturing is different than it was 20 years ago; the key challenges that need to be met to keep manufacturing strong; why it is important for the next generation to study STEM related courses; the benefits to a career in manufacturing; and how FANUC helps students and current workers become proficient with robotics and CNC automation.

At the WESTEC show in Long Beach, Calif., Nicholas Kaczmarski, national sales manager at Beamer Laser Marking System, talks with Brett Brune, Editor in Chief of Smart Manufacturing magazine about branding updates and an increase in solutions offered to the marketplace. He discusses the challenges manufacturers are facing, and how Beamer can provide solutions to remove the obstacles in the way. And he explains what the company does that differentiates it from competitors.

With metal-based additive manufacturing creating a lot of excitement and buzz, learning how to plan for and use it to best advantages is important. Andrew Carter, Senior Manufacturing Engineer for Stratasys Direct, the 3D printing manufacturing services company talks with Bruce Morey, Senior Technical Editor for Manufacturing Engineering magazine about the context and current best practices of metal-based additive manufacturing.

In today's metalcutting operations, optimization software plays a vital and growing role. In this episode, Alan Rooks, Editor in Chief of Manufacturing Engineering magazine, talks with Gene Granata, VERICUT Product Manager for CGTech, about the importance of optimization in metal cutting, how CGTech's VERICUT optimization software can be integrated with major CAM systems, how Force optimization is an improvement over other optimization strategies, and the types of toolpaths that VERICUT Force optimizes.

How is support-free breaking the rules of Designing for Additive Manufacturing? Dr. Zach Murphree, Vice President of Technical Partnerships at Velo3d, talks with Chris Mahar, associate editor of Manufacturing Engineering, about how Velo3d is enabling customers to print without the consideration of support structures, the types of applications it enables, and how it can actually improve the quality of printed parts.

Hidden energy loss can exist even within the most efficiently ran facilities. In this podcast, Han Tran, Application Engineer at Fluke Corporation sat down with Associate Editor Chris Mahar to discuss how to translate your energy management to money in your pocket.

With more than three decades' experience in manufacturing, 2019 SME President Mark Michalski has seen significant changes and remarkable technology advancements in his career. But it's what's coming in the next few years that most excites and impresses him. In this conversation with Chris Mahar, Associate Editor of Manufacturing Engineering magazine, Michalski looks back on his career, talks about what inspires people about manufacturing, and lends his perspective as SME president to what the next few years might hold for manufacturing: technology breakthroughs, process improvements, and how we'll address the workforce gap.

As the old saying goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words." But the pictures created by Fluke cameras are worth so much more – saving time, money and helping employees work better. Justin Sheard, Principal Engineer for New Product Solutions and Sat Sandhu, Thermography Support Manager at Fluke Corporation sit down with Associate Editor Chris Mahar to explain. From acoustic cameras to thermal imaging, these cameras mean business.

When it comes to the flow of making something – from concept to design to ordering to production – manufacturing hasn't changed as much over the last 50 years as many may believe. Gregg Bigleman, PhD, vice president of North American Sales at Sandvik Applied Manufacturing Technologies, sits down with Chris Mahar, associate editor of Manufacturing Engineering, to talk how new technologies can improve this process. Today's software and services are enabling a connected manufacturing environment that streamlines the manufacturing process into a single linear path, where information flows accurately and smoothly between the different stages and steps.