COMMENT
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Andrew Allcock, Editor
Treading water
”Seen anything interesting?” That’s the question, meaning
‘what’s the buzz here?’ that all journalists ask each other at any
major exhibition, most recently at the biennial EMO
manufacturing technology show, held last month in Hanover.
As ever, there were machine tool range additions,
improvements and tweaks – bigger, smaller, faster, less money,
more powerful, more tools, more accurate, more specialised, more processes on
a single machine, specific process improvements etc. But there was no
discernable underlying machine tool technology trend or development.
As for robot-based machine-tending automation, yes, there are increasing
numbers of examples, often with cobots, but again, it is now an established
available, if not widely applied, technology: no buzz. There were more automation
solutions in general, in fact, but technologically this is evolution not revolution.
Industry 4.0/the Smart Factory, then? Initially appearing as a phrase at EMO
2011, EMO 2017 was the zenith in Europe for the unveiling by manufacturing
technology firms of their various connected equipment and analysis software
offerings. Many solutions are now available and there were extensions to those,
but there was no buzz. That said, artificial intelligence applications were a
noticeable growth area at this event.
There was a buzz around standardised connectivity taking in the interface,
messaging protocol and messaging language. It is the latter area, where the
focus was, via ‘umati’ (universal machine tool interface). This standardises the
language of messaging from all compliant machines, but it will not be launched
until next year. Yet there are already solutions available that allow connectivity,
data gathering and analysis from a mix of machines/equipment. Umati will,
however, make such connectivity easier and more visible, of course.
Emobility? Again, it had a higher profile in 2017, albeit there were some
specific tooling and machine tool developments this year. But emobility is, in fact,
a spectre at the feast. Electric cars have fewer parts and so will require fewer
machine tools and related technology, as well as people, in their manufacture.
Additive manufacturing (AM) in metal is also a challenger to the casting/
forging/machining world. It is increasingly accepted, if not yet applied, so its
presence at EMO was this year no cause for surprise or general comment. In fact
the AM zone was smaller than in 2017 and seemed quite low-key.
Overall, the feeling was one of treading water. We are on the cusp of large
change, with many of the necessary tools already in the box – the manufacturing
technology supply sector appears to be waiting for industry at large to catch up. ■
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