Big Press for Technology Investment at IMTS
Shop Talk
Capturing this week's zeitgeist
IMTS 2024 is almost here with an impressive set of new products to be unveiled!
Some of my favorites to check out by floor:
- North Building Level 3 - Abrasive Machining, Automation, Machine Components/Cleaning/Environment
- Vention’s (236860) manufacturing automation platform (MAP) allows users to design, automate, deploy and operate complex manufacturing equipment, on a single platform.
- Copia Automation’s (236313) Industrial DevOps Platform, a cloud-based Git solution that serves as an operational technology (OT) control center. The platform provides a clear view of all code within industrial operations to eliminate unexpected disruptions resulting from coding errors.
- East Building Level 3 - Software, Additive, Quality Assurance, Components
- Fulcrum’s (135957) cloud manufacturing software that connects your shop with live data to make better decisions, faster.
- First Resonance’s (134378) ION Factory OS is a manufacturing 4.0 software solution designed to help engineering and manufacturing teams execute complex hardware assembly fast and iterate as they go, without sacrificing quality.
- South Building Level 3 - CNC, Metal Removal
- LK Machinery’s (338698) 13,000-ton dual-injection gigapress, high-quality die casting machines, and injection molding machines.
- Modig Machine Tool’s (338884) inverted machining centers are setting a new standard for machining. Inverted machining means a new way of performance with the spindle machining from below.
- Tormach’s (338062) full line runs on single-phase power and includes free and open-source control software called PathPilot®.
- West Building, Level 3 - Additive, Tooling & Workholding
- Oqton (433171) helps manufacturers increase innovation and efficiency by intelligently automating production with an AI-powered, technology agnostic cloud-based Manufacturing OS for complete traceability and visibility across an organization.
- Massivit’s (432425) 10000-G will print live throughout the event, revealing the latest high-speed automation capabilities for custom manufacturing and industrial tooling.
Kaizen Blitz
- 🚦 Andon Status
- 🟢 TSMC’s Arizona Trials Put Plant Productivity on Par with Taiwan, to start mass production in Arizona in 2025
- 🟡 Can CATL Stay Ahead?
- 🟡 Would Samsung benefit from Intel exit from foundry race?
- 🚨 Volkswagen warns of plant closures in Germany, citing ‘extremely tense’ situation
- 📊 Survey Says
- This is the most exciting time to invest in Industrial Tech in decades according to NGP Capital’s Jacob Fellman and Lyydia Lappi.
- 🗣️ Town Hall
- NVIDIA AI Podcast host Noah Kravitz speaks with Mehr, CEO of Machina Labs, on how the company uses AI to develop the first-ever robotic blacksmith.
- 🏛️📜 Industrial Policy
- US fears Nippon bid for U.S. Steel could hit vital steel supplies and U.S. Steel could leave Pittsburgh without a deal.
- China’s BYD Pauses Mexico Factory Plans Until After US Election
Assembly Line
This week's most influential Industry 4.0 media.
How Aurora is finding its own lane on the road to autonomous trucking
Aurora has zeroed in on long-haul trucking for a number of reasons: It’s a far larger market than other autonomous-vehicle possibilities, there’s more money to be made, and a general scarcity of drivers. The American Trucking Association estimates that the industry is short of 78,000 drivers and will need to hire another 1.2 million over the next decade. Plus, trucking has an efficiency limit that can’t be fixed by better driver pay or training: how long any one driver can legally stay on the road.
Aurora has spent the past few years developing its hardware and software stack. A key technological component of Aurora’s plan sits above the cab of each of its trucks: its proprietary FirstLight lidar sensor, which uses a continuous stream of laser light that varies in frequency instead of the usual fixed-frequency light pulses to detect road objects farther out.
Aurora is banking on production efficiencies getting it there. It’s moving to condense FirstLight into a system-on-a-chip design and has signed up the German mobility manufacturer Continental to mass-produce its hardware stack, with a 2027 due date for both projects.
First Ever Tour Of Blue Origin's Massive New Glenn Launch Pad w/ Jeff Bezos!
The Gigacasting Question: Innovation Vs. Investment In Auto Production
Imagine reducing the number of total parts in a car by 370. That’s exactly what Tesla achieved with its Model 3, using the colossal Giga Press and eliminating problems associated with joining 70 pieces. Tesla reported a 40% cost reduction for the rear of the Model Y using gigacasting. While exact production time savings vary, industry experts suggest significant reductions in manufacturing time and complexity.
A comparison of manufacturing methods for producing 100,000 rear underbody units per year reveals that steel stamping and joining require $2.3 million to $3.4 million in equipment and tooling, while aluminum gigacasting needs a $6 million HPDC machine and $1.2 million to $1.5 million in tooling. However, gigacasting also achieves 27.8 doable jobs per hour versus 24.4 for steel stamping while reducing labor costs and indirect costs. With the reduced complexity, there are fewer parts to be made, simplifying assembly and quality control processes and requiring fewer operators on the production line. While gigacasting uses more expensive materials ($151 to $226 vs. $75.6 for steel), the overall cost benefits are substantial, and changing mold designs offers more flexible than modifying hundreds of parts in a complex supply chain.
Ultrasonic Extruded Weld-Riveting
Traditionally, either fasteners or adhesives have been used to join metal parts to carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastic (CFRTP). Alternatively, welding is being used to join metal and CFRTP. The mainstream method of welding metal and CFRTP is first to modify the metal part by creating macro- or microstructures on its surface. These structures help to increase the effective connection area and improve the mechanical interlocking between the two parts. Next, a thermal technique, such as laser welding, friction stir welding or hot-press welding, is used to heat the metal part above the melting point of the CFRTP. Heat from the metal then melts the CFRTP, and the molten resin flows into the surface structures of the metal part to form a joint.
The problem with this method is that the heat can adversely affect the metal part, especially for metals with poor high-temperature resistance, such as magnesium alloys. We have developed a new technique, ultrasonic extruded weld-riveting, that shows promise for joining metal to CFRTP without a third component and without damaging either part. In our method, prefabricated through-holes are machined on the metal part. The CFRTP part is placed on top of the metal one. Ultrasonic welding is used to melt the CFRTP, and the molten plastic is squeezed into the holes in the metal. A riveted joint will then form after the plastic cools and solidifies.
How Heyco Products Leverages Metal 3D Printed Tooling
Multi-agent reinforcement learning for integrated manufacturing system-process control
The increasing complexity, adaptability, and interconnections inherent in modern manufacturing systems have spurred a demand for integrated methodologies to boost productivity, improve quality, and streamline operations across the entire system. This paper introduces a holistic system-process modeling and control approach, utilizing a Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) based integrated control scheme to optimize system yields. The key innovation of this work lies in integrating the theoretical development of manufacturing system-process property understanding with enhanced MARL-based control strategies, thereby improving system dynamics comprehension. This, in turn, enhances informed decision-making and contributes to overall efficiency improvements. In addition, we present two innovative MARL algorithms: the credit-assigned multi-agent actor-attention-critic (C-MAAC) and the physics-guided multi-agent actor-attention-critic (P-MAAC), each designed to capture the individual contributions of agents within the system. C-MAAC extracts global information via parallel-trained attention blocks, whereas P-MAAC embeds system dynamics through permanent production loss (PPL) attribution. Numerical experiments underscore the efficacy of our MARL-based control scheme, particularly highlighting the superior training and execution performance of C-MAAC and P-MAAC. Notably, P-MAAC achieves rapid convergence and exhibits remarkable robustness against environmental variations, validating the proposed approach’s practical relevance and effectiveness.
New Product Introduction
Highlighting new and innovative facilities, processes, products, and services
ADNOC Deploys Pioneering AI-Enabled Process Optimization Technology
ADNOC announced today the deployment of an industry leading artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled process optimization technology. Neuron 5 was developed by ADNOC and has been initially deployed at ADNOC Onshore’s Northeast Bab (NEB) field and ADNOC Gas’s Taweelah gas compression plant across hundreds of pieces of equipment. Following the successful initial deployment, Neuron 5 will now be rolled out in all ADNOC facilities across thousands of critical pieces of equipment essential for production, including compressors, valves and generators.
The innovative solution autonomously monitors performance of critical equipment, enabling process optimization and preventative maintenance, reducing operational downtime, boosting efficiency and reducing the need for time-consuming manual inspections. Neuron 5 uses advanced AI models and deep learning algorithms to predict maintenance needs and monitor equipment performance by interpreting data, such as pressure, temperature and vibration, received from sensors on critical equipment.
Westinghouse Unveils Pioneering Nuclear Generative AI System
Westinghouse Electric Company launched its Hive™ nuclear-specific Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) System to deliver custom GenAI solutions for its global customer base. The Hive System will be a game-changing capability that will drive improved cost and schedule through the entire reactor lifecycle from design, licensing, manufacturing, construction and operations.
With the Hive System, customers gain access to more than 100 years of proprietary industry innovation and knowledge pioneered by Westinghouse, powered by its global team of engineers and data scientists, via a highly secure system infrastructure and software. By integrating the Hive System into its own products, services and processes, Westinghouse engineers drive enhancements to their operations and customer applications. Additionally, the Hive System helps customers optimize maintenance planning, enhance inspections and improve the digital user experience to provide operational teams with the right information at the right moment.
World’s first zinc-ion battery megafactory opens in Sweden
Enerpoly, a Swedish zinc-ion battery cell technology manufacturer, has opened the world’s first zinc-ion battery megafactory in Sweden. Dubbed the Enerpoly Production Innovation Center, the 70,000-sq-ft (6,500-sq-m) factory is designed to achieve a capacity throughput of 100 MWh annually. That’ll be in a couple of years though: while the company has begun commissioning already, it’s slated to reach full production capacity only in 2026.
Delta and Subsidiary Universal Instruments Unveil AI-based Automation and Digital Twins for Semiconductor Manufacturing
Delta, a global leader in power management and a world-class provider of industrial automation solutions, along with its U.S.-based subsidiary Universal Instruments, unveiled at SEMICON Taiwan 2024, a set of next-generation solutions designed to enable digital twins and AI-based automation in semiconductor manufacturing applications. These include the DIATwin Virtual Machine Development Platform, which accelerates new product development by up to 20%. Leveraging its extensive experience in industrial automation, Delta develops the Wafer Edge Profile Measurement Solution for semiconductor front-end processing, which features highly customizable features for added equipment value.
At SEMICON Taiwan 2024, Delta is highlighting the DIATwin Virtual Machine Development Platform. In addition, Delta is demonstrating its innovative digital twin platform developed on the NVIDIA OmniverseTM platform. Delta’s digital twin platform can virtually link specific production lines and aggregate data from a diverse range of equipment and systems to generate synthetic data to train its computer models to achieve 90% accuracy.
Business Transactions
This week's top funding events, acquisitions, and partnerships across industrial value chains.
24M Raises $87 Million in Series H Preferred Investment Round
24M today announced it has closed an $87 million investment round. This Series H Preferred Stock financing led by Nuovo+, a 24M strategic partner and licensee, values the company at $1.3 billion post-money. This new investment brings 24M total funding to over $500 million and will help accelerate the commercialization and mass production of 24M offerings, most notably with the acquisition and opening of a new R&D and pilot manufacturing plant in Rayong, Thailand. In addition to Nuovo+, other strategic investors in this round include Kyocera Corporation, ASAHI Kasei, Dai Nippon Printing Company (DNP), Lucas TVS and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines.
6K Closes $82M as Part of Series E Fund Raise for Expansion of Production Capabilities
6K, a leader in the sustainable production of engineered materials for lithium-ion batteries and additive manufacturing, today announced that it has closed $82M as part of its Series E funding round. The capital raised was an insider-led investment with investors Anzu Partners, Energy Impact Partners, LaunchCapital, Material Impact, and Volta Energy Technologies participating to enable the company to scale up production for battery cathode active materials (CAM) and the expansion for additive manufacturing metal powders. The $82M represents the first close of Series E with the second close expected in the late fall. In addition, Dr. Aaron Bent has transitioned out of the position of CEO, handing the reigns over to 6K COO Dr. Saurabh Ullal who assumes the role of CEO effective immediately.
Seegrid Announces Closing of $50M Series D Investment
Seegrid Corporation, the leader in autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for pallet material handling, today announced the successful closure of its $50M Series D investment round, funded by its existing lead investors Giant Eagle Incorporated and G2 Venture Partners, as well as smaller investments from other existing shareholders. The investment allows Seegrid to accelerate its autonomous lift truck market initiatives, which are currently generating more growth than expected, in a market that is projected to reach nearly $3.5B by 2027.
3DEO Secures Strategic Investment from Mizuho Bank to Drive Innovation in Metal Additive Manufacturing
3DEO, a Los Angeles-based leader in design, engineering, and metal additive manufacturing (AM), proudly announces a significant strategic investment from Mizuho Bank, Ltd., a Japan-headquartered global financial institution committed to fostering innovation and sustainability. This investment underscores Mizuho’s dedication to advancing the adoption of AM technologies and supporting 3DEO’s efforts to unlock new opportunities in product design and development.
Mizuho Bank’s investment of $3.5 million in 3DEO highlights a shared vision for the future of manufacturing, particularly in leveraging 3DEO’s proprietary Intelligent Layering® technology and expertise in Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM). This strategic investment follows Mizuho Bank’s “Transition Investment Facility,” aimed at promoting sustainability and innovation in various sectors.
Entalpic raises €8.5 Million to pioneer AI solutions for decarbonizing industrial chemistry
Entalpic, an innovative startup at the forefront of generative AI technology for materials discovery targeted to the chemical industry, announced today that it has successfully secured €8.5 million in seed funding. This investment is led by Breega, Cathay Innovation & Felicis, alongside contributions and insights from industry and academic advisors Jörg Weiser (ex-Managing Director at Schrödinger), Gilles Wainrib (co-founder at Owkin), Thomas Wolf (CSO and co-founder at Hugging Face), Arnaud Robert (ex C-level at Sanofi), Michal Valko (Principal LLama Engineer at Meta, ex-Deepmind) and Yoshua Bengio (Turing award, founder and scientific director at Mila). Entalpic emerges from a collaboration between researchers at Mila, the world’s premier research lab specializing in machine learning for climate action, and a leading executive from Owkin, a unicorn company renowned for its use of AI in drug discovery. Leveraging this expertise, Entalpic is set to redefine material and molecule discovery for a more sustainable future.
Entalpic’s state-of-the-art AI platform is designed to generate and evaluate new materials and molecules that could replace outdated industrial chemical processes. This platform swiftly formulates and tests chemical hypotheses through a series of automated experiments, enriching the knowledge base with actionable data. By integrating diverse data sources—from numerical quantum simulations and physical lab experiments to academic literature and patents—Entalpic leverages the latest in AI technology, including Large Language Models (LLMs), Active Learning and Graph Neural Networks.
L2L Acquires SwipeGuide: The Future of the Connected Workforce Is Here
L2L, the global leader in connected workforce solutions, announced the acquisition of SwipeGuide, a European trailblazer in mobile-first frontline training and visual job aids for the manufacturing workforce. SwipeGuide enhances L2L’s training and skills management capabilities, offering an intuitive solution for capturing and distributing critical operational knowledge on the factory floor in a collaborative way.
With the addition of SwipeGuide to its product portfolio, L2L is better positioned to support its customers’ frontline training and upskilling efforts — a need underscored by the ongoing shortage of skilled manufacturing employees. SwipeGuide customers, on average, have realized a 50% reduction in training time, directly impacting their bottom line.
The acquisition is driven by a shared vision: to simplify operations and empower the frontline workforce by creating one simple shop floor app to guide teams through their day-to-day activities across lines, shifts, and sites to improve performance.