Advanced Manufacturing Now

In this episode of Advanced Manufacturing Now, host Steve Plumb is joined by educators Chris Desmond from Hopewell High School and Jason Hyatt from Cazenovia High School. Both schools are part of the SME Education Foundation's PRIME (Partnership Response in Manufacturing Education) initiative, which has recently expanded to middle schools. Chris and Jason discuss how hands-on learning, advanced manufacturing technologies and community partnerships are shaping the future of STEM education and preparing students for rewarding careers in manufacturing.

Advanced Manufacturing Now is an SME Media podcast. As an industry thought leader, SME Media publishes Manufacturing Engineering & Technology and AdvancedManufacturing.org. The team of seasoned editorial, digital, sales and marketing, and audience service professionals is deeply committed to keeping readers well-informed and engaged on the latest manufacturing advances to help them make timely decisions to improve their business operations. From cutting tools and other traditional equipment and processes to workforce development, advanced software, additive manufacturing and Industry 4.0, we've got you covered.

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In this episode of Advanced Manufacturing Now, the team previews the June/July issue of Manufacturing Engineering and Technology, available to read now on advancedmanufacturing.org. The issue explores the intersection of people and technology, from press brake tooling and setup reduction to evolving chip control strategies. The conversation also dives into the growing role of AI—from engineering design reviews to real-time decision-making—and what it takes to successfully integrate it into modern manufacturing.

Satyandra K Gupta, co-founder and chief scientist for GrayMatter Robotics, talks with SME Media about the company's new agreement with defense prime Huntington Ingalls Industries, the recent expansion of its operations and the latest advances and applications for physical AI in manufacturing.

This episode is a recording of the latest episode of Advanced Manufacturing Live. Previous episodes of Advanced Manufacturing Live are available on advancedmanufacturing.org/live. Follow SME Media on Facebook, LinkedIn, X and YouTube to join us live every other Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern Time.

In this episode of Advanced Manufacturing Now, Steve Bauer sits down with Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT) Vice President of Technology Ryan Kelly to unpack a unique industry challenge: why breakthrough technologies aren't reaching factory floors fast enough. Plus, a preview of what to expect at IMTS, where the next wave of innovation takes center stage.

The uncomfortable truth? Most AI initiatives fail - not because of the technology, but because engineering data is fragmented, tribal knowledge lives in inboxes, and process discipline isn't built for scale.

Join Patrick Harrigan, VP of Partnerships at CADDi, and Greg Cunningham, Platform Specialist at IMAGINiT Technologies, for a candid discussion on what it actually takes to prepare your organization for AI-driven growth.

This isn't theory. It's a practical game plan for manufacturers who want to:

• Turn engineering data into competitive advantage
• Break down silos between design, manufacturing and supply chain
• Reduce costly rework and accelerate speed to market
• Build the structured foundation AI requires to succeed

PRESENTERS:

Patrick Harrigan VP of Partnerships CADDi

Greg Cunningham Platform Specialist IMAGINiT Technologies

Presented by CADDi

Visit https://advancedmanufacturing.org/webinars for more webinars and an interactive experience with visuals.

From supply chain volatility and geopolitical unrest to workforce challenges and transformative technologies, manufacturers need to learn how to survive—and thrive—in dynamic environments where flexibility is critical. Quickparts CEO Avi Reichental and SME Media's Steve Plumb and Michael McConnell discuss what this means for the industry today and how it could impact the future.

Reichental leads Quickparts' global operations, creating components for aerospace, medical and mobility through additive manufacturing.

This episode is a recording of the latest episode of Advanced Manufacturing Live. Previous episodes of Advanced Manufacturing Live are available on advancedmanufacturing.org/live. Follow SME Media on Facebook, LinkedIn, X and YouTube to join us live every other Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern Time.

On the latest episode of Advanced Manufacturing Now, the editorial team discusses the 250th anniversary of the United States, and the spirit of innovation they discovered while putting together the State-by-State of the Manufacturing Industry special report.

This episode of Advanced Manufacturing Now brings together three Executive Perspectives from RAPID + TCT 2026, exploring where additive manufacturing stands today and where it's headed next. Featuring conversations with SME's Brett Conner, Stratasys' Foster Ferguson, and Brigadier General Beth Behn, we discuss the shift from prototyping to production, the rise of digital supply chains and the growing influence of AI, qualification standards and defense demand in shaping the future of AM.

The job market for manufacturing engineers may be stronger than in other industries, but uncertainty still persists for job seekers. Industry veteran and former executive recruiter Dick Schenkel speaks with us about the qualities job seekers can practice to stand out to prospective employers.

On December 5, 2022, researchers at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved a landmark breakthrough in Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF), producing an energy output that exceeded the laser input for the first time. The success of an ICF experiment hinges on multi-stage lapping and polishing of fuel capsule shells to nanometer-scale finish and devoid of major surface defects. This talk presents our work with LLNL on assuring surface quality of the fuel capsule shells. Rare surface defects, such as deep pits, can severely degrade ICF performance. Exhaustive inspection across multiple finishing stages to detect these defects is both cost- and time-prohibitive. Conventional scalar surface quality quantifiers fail to capture the manifestation of rare surface pits. We investigated novel inspection strategies that substantially reduce measurement burden while retaining confidence in defect-risk estimation. Here, we impose a multivariate probabilistic bound on pit distribution estimation error to determine the minimal number of surface scans needed to guarantee a specified confidence level. This enables reliable assessment of deep pit risk using approximately 5 – 6 scans (a 5- to 10-fold reduction), thereby substantially reducing the inspection time per shell at each finishing stage. These challenges also motivate the need to move beyond reactive, post-process inspection toward proactive, process monitoring methods that can detect and mitigate the process anomalies that lead to these defects. In this context, we leverage generative machine learning methods conditioned on polishing process parameters combined with shell tracking to identify deviations from expected motion patterns that may lead to surface defects. We also introduce a deep learning model that can track the evolution of pit populations across the polishing stages, capturing rare-event manifestations that scalar surface quantifiers miss. Predictive insights from these models inform possible triaging of at-risk parts and more informed process planning decisions. Taken together, these contributions illustrate how integrating inspection efficiency, process understanding, and predictive decision support can advance manufacturing quality control in settings where rare anomalies and high-consequence requirements demand more than conventional approaches.

PRESENTERS:

Satish Bukkapatnam, PhD Regents Professor, Sugar and Mike Barnes Department Head Chair, Industrial & Systems Engineering Texas A&M University

Shashank Galla Graduate Research Assistant, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) Texas A&M University

Presented by SME Technical Activities