As composite manufacturing has advanced over the years, it has experienced a striking imbalance in the maturity of digital technologies. Computers have performed design and engineering tasks for decades, while paper plybooks and travelers are still used in many shops to guide composites fabrication. Since our founding in 1988 (when we were called Assembly Guidance),… Read more »
As more and more automation is used to manufacture large components, relying on human beings and a set of rudimentary measuring tools to inspect works in progress (WIPs) seems more and more antiquated. More important, manual inspection on automated manufacturing floors now represents the bottleneck of bottlenecks for industries that are otherwise achieving new speed… Read more »
When it’s time to purchase new laser projectors, the choice of which projectors to buy often simply comes down to cost. But that’s where the simple part ends! Though the projectors themselves may look pretty similar from vendor to vendor, their actual value is determined by the answers to three primary questions: When 3D laser… Read more »
Industry 4.0 for composites is attainable in 2023. If your reaction to this statement is skepticism, not only are you not alone; you are probably in the majority of composites industry professionals. This is especially true when it comes to in-process composites quality programs. After all, quality assurance on most fabrication floors still depends on… Read more »
“Achieving the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) for laser projection” is how Aligned Vision president Scott Blake summarizes what he and the Aligned Vision team heard from you throughout 2022. At trade shows, customer visits and other venues, we listened to what you had to share about your experience with laser projection, automatic inspection… Read more »
Anyone who has traversed the qualification process for a new manufacturing technology knows just how lengthy and complex these processes can be. The uninitiated may be surprised to learn that implementing a new technology takes many more steps than they might have anticipated. In reality, qualifying a new manufacturing technology for application to your shop… Read more »
“Foreign object debris” (FOD) may not be the term that devotees of the Game of Thrones series would use, but most still remember the Starbucks cup that escaped the cutting room floor and made its way to TV screens across the world in the series finale. As an analogy to the problem of foreign object… Read more »
The benefits of automatic inspection extend well beyond the technology’s lights-out speed and greater accuracy compared to manual inspection. This is because of one obvious difference between the two: automatic inspection technologies like LASERVISION produce data, and lots of it. Manufacturers of large, complex components and subassemblies are quickly leveraging this “big data” to boost… Read more »
Mobile electronic process control has proven to be a highly valuable tool for manufacturers that employ manual processes in their production operations. Many such operations will continue to be performed most efficiently by human operators, because people have better visual and tactile senses and greater mobility than automated systems. Even as robots and cobots continue… Read more »