Hexagon
Canvas Category Software : Engineering : Digital Twin
Hexagon is a global leader in digital reality solutions, combining sensor, software and autonomous technologies. We are putting data to work to boost efficiency, productivity, quality and safety across industrial, manufacturing, infrastructure, public sector, and mobility applications. Our technologies are shaping production and people-related ecosystems to become increasingly connected and autonomous — ensuring a scalable, sustainable future. We believe in a world where economic growth does not come at the expense of the planet and its people, and that we should drive sustainability efforts in every aspect of our business.
Assembly Line
Smarten Up Your Factory Layouts and Parts Tracking
Using 3D imaging, RIIICO in Aachen, Germany, creates virtual twins of factories, allowing companies to experiment with new layouts. New York-based PrintParts uses innovative, proprietary materials to track specifications and histories for 3D-printed parts using its SmartParts system. The two digital manufacturing technology companies are winners of Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence’s first cohort of its Sixth Sense accelerator program.
Praemo, the runner-up to RIIICO and PrintParts, develops a machine learning system called Razor that analyzes data from automation, quality, historians and maintenance systems and helps manufacturers develop lean operations and increased productivity.
Divergent Technologies, Inc. Announces Closing of Upsized $230 Million Series D Capital Raise
Divergent Technologies, the company that has invented, developed, and commercialized the world’s first end-to-end digital industrial manufacturing system, announced today that it has completed a Series D equity financing totaling $230 million. The round was led by a $100 million investment from Hexagon AB and included participation from new and existing institutional and family office investors.
Divergent has developed the Divergent Adaptive Production System (“DAPS™”), an end-to-end system-level replacement for traditional design, manufacturing, and assembly solutions. DAPS is a complete software-hardware production system that leverages in-house developed AI-driven generative design software to computationally engineer structures, novel materials and additive manufacturing to materialize structures, and automated fixtureless assembly to create large multi-part assemblies. Products created using DAPS are superior in performance, lower in cost, rapidly customizable to meet mission and customer-specific requirements, faster to market, and scalable on demand to high volume production.
Divergent uses this revolutionary system to supply the automotive, aerospace and defense industries with next generation products as a certified Tier 1 supplier. It has seven blue-chip automotive customers, including Aston Martin and Mercedes-AMG. Within the aerospace and defense industry, Divergent is actively working with six U.S. government contractors across a diverse range of applications.
Hexagon's Sixth Sense Announces Nine Startups to Transform Manufacturing Sustainability and Digital Reality
Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division announced the nine manufacturing startups chosen for its third Sixth Sense cohort. The nine startups are:
- Acerta Analytics, Canada: Acerta Analytics provides advanced analytics solutions that leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI) to turn complex product data into actionable insights. The solution enables automakers and suppliers of complex vehicle parts to improve quality in manufacturing processes and supports early defect detection.
- Circularise, Netherlands: Circularise offers digital product passports for end-to-end traceability and secure data exchange in industrial supply chains. Its technology helps companies achieve transparency and sustainability by tracking the lifecycle of products and materials.
- Dessia, France: Dessia offers a platform featuring virtual “bots” that serve as companions to assist engineers in designing mechanical systems. These virtual assistants provide support and insights throughout the design process.
- Flexxbotics, Boston, US: Flexxbotics specialises in enabling high-mix automation-intensive manufacturers to create flexible next-generation machining environments. It utilises breakthrough FlexxCORE™ technology to seamlessly connect and coordinate collaborative robots with existing automation equipment, IT systems, and personnel to deliver autonomous process control.
- Launchpad, Los Angeles, US: Launchpad utilises AI and advanced simulation technologies to automate aspects of the design, procurement, and manufacturing process. Its focus is on concepts like mass customization, micro-factories, and software-defined robotics to create shorter supply chains, reduce waste, and deliver new features faster in the manufacturing industry.
- Rafinex, Luxembourg: Rafinex’s stochastic AI topology optimization for safe, lightweight designs. This technology actively manages uncertainty and risks of real-life variability to create uniquely robust designs that remain safe even in off-design load conditions for application in safety-critical performance sectors such as aerospace, automotive, and tooling.
- RV Magnetics, Slovakia: RV Magnetics has developed the world’s smallest passive sensor based on MicroWire technology. This sensor combines unique capabilities from electromechanics, electronics, chemistry, physics, applied magnetism, and industrial design, offering diverse applications.
- ToffeeAM, London, UK: ToffeeAM provides state-of-the-art multi-physics generative design software for engineering. Its mission is to empower engineers to optimise engineering components and systems efficiently, enabling them to go further and faster in design processes.
- Zaptic, Manchester, UK: Zaptic provides job instruction and collaboration tools for frontline teams, along with a no-code toolkit designed to accelerate the digital transformation of daily operations. The solutions help organizations streamline processes and improve communication among frontline workers.
🤝 Hexagon collaborates with NVIDIA to transform industrial digital twin solution
Hexagon AB, the global leader in digital reality solutions combining sensor, software and autonomous solutions technologies, announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to enable industrial digital twin solutions that unite reality capture, manufacturing twins, AI, simulation and visualisation to deliver real-time comparison to real-world models.
The collaboration will connect industry-leading technologies from Hexagon and NVIDIA to enable seamless, multi-user workflows through a unified view for factory planning and design, as well as process quality optimisation and operations. As part of the collaboration, Hexagon’s HxDR reality capture platform and Nexus manufacturing platform will be connected to NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for developing and operating industrial metaverse applications, based on the Universal Scene Description (USD) framework. The connected platforms provide complementary technologies that enable customers to advance manufacturing for digital factories and accelerate the power of digital twins for intelligent cities, construction and infrastructure.
Sustainable Industry Repair with RoboDK
Datanomix and Hexagon Announce Agreement to Bring Real-Time Factory Analytics to Industrial Manufacturers Worldwide
Datanomix, maker of the industry’s only Automated Production Intelligence™ software platform, announced a partnership with Hexagon to offer the Datanomix software solution to its global manufacturing customers. Datanomix is well known for its industry-changing No Operator Input™ approach to production monitoring, which removes the common challenges and complexities companies face when deploying production monitoring solutions. Precision manufacturers looking to improve production efficiency, increase utilization, optimize cycle times and increase part margins will benefit from the automated reports and insights that Datanomix provides.
Hexagon AB invests $100m into Divergent Technologies
Divergent Technologies has received 100m USD in investment from software technologies leader Hexagon AB. A portion of Hexagon’s investment is subject to certain regulatory approvals. It follows the automotive tier 1 manufacturer’s 160m USD Series C funding round in April of last year. With this funding from Hexagon, Divergent is seeking to accelerate its plans to build a global network of DAPS factories, which will each serve multiple OEM clients.
Sixth Sense selects its second cohort
For its second challenge, Sixth Sense invited companies working within two areas. First was Visualisation and Digital Reality. This means creating a real object’s digital representation to improve productivity, test automated processes, simulate outcomes and improve planning. The second area was Intelligence and Automation. Specifically, Sixth Sense welcomed start-ups working on adaptable automation or hyper-automation, which has intelligence behind it. Using AI and machine learning, it can adapt to the changes in the process without prompting.
The selected companies were:
- CASTOR: Our audience selection enables optimised manufacturing and increased profitability by using industrial 3D printing. The company solves the challenge of identifying where, when, and how it is beneficial to use 3D printing by automatically analysing each part within an existing product design.
- Threedy: With its instant3Dhub, Threedy offers a unique infrastructure component that allows companies to meet the constantly growing demand for highly available 3D data in responsive and interactive applications.
- Oculavis: The start-up offers the software as a service solution, ‘oculavis SHARE’, used for augmented reality video customer support. It claims to reduce mean time to repair by up to 50%; annual field service costs by up to 20%, and CO2 emissions due to less travel.
- 3YOURMIND: 3YOURMIND is an on-demand manufacturing software that empowers companies to identify and produce parts when needed. With 3YOURMIND’s help, OEMs operating companies and contract manufacturers can create digital inventories of qualified parts to reduce costs, shorten production lead times, and secure more efficient and agile operations.
- GelSight: The company is a pioneer in digital, imaging-based tactile intelligence. The proprietary technology invented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provides exceptionally detailed and rapid surface characterisation, enabling several surface measurement applications and robotic sensing capabilities.
- Augmentir: Augmentir’s Smart Connected Worker Solution is a complete suite of AI-powered connected worker tools. It helps industrial companies digitally transform frontline work to achieve production goals in today’s era of workforce disruption.
- Teratonics: Teratonics aims to help the manufacturing industry cut costs and optimise manufacturing processes by reducing the use of raw materials, energy and time. The company does contactless measurement and defect detection solutions and services for the industry 4.0 inside plastics, composites, assemblies and coatings.
- JITbase: The start-up’s product helps CNC operators manage more machines simultaneously with maximum efficiency, thanks to a dynamic scheduling system fed by live machine data. JITbase helps to address the shortage of specialised employees by allowing CNC machinists to handle more machines and improves production margins by reducing downtimes and increasing machine utilisation.
Hexagon and Raytheon Technologies developing simulation tool to improve 3D printing build quality
Hexagon and Raytheon Technologies have partnered to deliver a simulation tool that will enable evaluation and optimisation of metal additive manufacturing (AM) processes through the prediction of thermal history and defects at the laser path and powder layer scale.
Combining technologies from Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division and Raytheon Technologies’ Pratt and Whitney business, the new software will predict defects before the expensive and time-consuming printing process begins. This analysis will help designers and engineers evaluate the print outcome and test combinations of materials, geometries, and print processes.
The software will be made available to a range of companies engaged in additive manufacturing and will be complementary to Hexagon’s existing Simufact Additive tool. The similarity to the existing user interface will allow easy integration into existing manufacturing processes by users without the need for extensive training.
FORT’s $25MM Series B Funding Accelerates Expansion of its Machine Communications Platform
FORT Robotics (FORT), a pioneer in communications and control for smart machines, today announced the close of a $25 million Series B funding round, led by Tiger Global. The company will use the funds to accelerate the rollout of its machine communications platform, which aims to make autonomous machines safer and more secure.
FORT’s platform technology is the foundation for its hardware solutions, including wireless emergency stops and remote control systems, that are used by industry leaders including Agility Robotics, Hexagon, Moog, and hundreds of others. With the new investment, FORT plans to expand its platform functionality and enhance security offerings to address growing demand from end users.
Pioneering autonomous road trains achieve world first
Mineral Resources’ autonomous road trains project has reached a world-first milestone, achieving a successful demonstration run of a triple-trailer, automated road train platoon with each road train hauling 300 tonnes of iron ore.
The demonstration showcased the success of our autonomous road trains pilot project, which has been underway at our Yilgarn iron ore operations since late 2021.
MinRes has partnered with autonomy specialist Hexagon on the project, integrating Hexagon’s drive-by-wire technology with an autonomous management system to orchestrate vehicle movement.
Sixth Sense selects seven start-ups for its first cohort
Seven Hills was delighted to support the first pitch day from Sixth Sense by Hexagon, a virtual event that saw 13 smart manufacturing start-ups pitch their pioneering innovations to a panel of expert judges and a global audience of 300 manufacturing leaders.
The winning companies as voted by the judges and attendees were:
- IconPro: Software which enables companies around the world to turn production data into sustainable value and growth.
- SmartUQ: The premier supplier of Machine Learning (ML) software optimally designed for science and engineering applications.
- EyeFlow AI: The No-Code SaaS platform to enable anyone to build Computer Vision application with AI in a simple, fast and intuitive way.
- Praemo: Razor™ ingests data as-is from automation, quality, historian, maintenance, and other manufacturing systems delivering differentiating insights to drive next level Continuous Improvement.
- SmartParts: Enabling organizations to unlock the full potential of additive manufacturing by introducing an intelligent material that is scannable, traceable, and cloud-connected.
- SMARTPM: AN engineering company focused on smart automation and optimization of industrial processes, based on in-depth knowledge of industrial and metrology processes.
- RIIICO: Bringing factories into the 21st century with a collaborative planning platform that disrupts how managers visualize their physical spaces and equipment.
Hexagon industrialises high quality additive manufacturing with open ecosystem strategy
Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division has revealed its plans to build the industry’s most flexible and open additive manufacturing (AM) ecosystem to help overcome complexities in 3D printing processes and support customers in effectively building their product development and manufacturing workflows.
“Just as large manufacturers drove the provision of open factory automation, it’s important we vendors now break down barriers to new manufacturing technologies that offer more flexibility and efficiency. Instead, open data standards should be seen as a growth enabler.”