PLM Software: Managing Product Data From First Sketch to Production
When a new client calls me about PLM software, the first question I ask isn’t about the software at all. Instead, I ask them to walk me through the last engineering change that went wrong. Nearly every company has a story. In one plant, a drawing…
CAD/CAM Software: Turning Design Files Into Accurate Machine Toolpaths
The file an engineer sends me is never the part. Instead, it is a promise of a part. Between that clean solid model and a finished component, someone has to plan every move. A spinning piece of carbide has to travel through aluminum, steel, or titanium…
FDM vs SLA: Choosing the Right Print Process for Functional Parts
The first functional part I ever printed for a production line taught me more about FDM vs SLA than any datasheet ever has, and it failed in about forty minutes. It was a locating nest for a pneumatic press, printed on a filament machine in ABS, and I…
SLS 3D Printing: When Powder Bed Fusion Beats Injection Molding
Nearly every week someone sends me a CAD file and asks the same thing: “Should we just cut a mold?” Sometimes the answer is yes, and I tell them right away. But more often than people expect, the honest answer is that SLS 3D printing will get…
Machine Vision for Quality Inspection: A Practical Buyer’s Guide
I have lost count of how many times I have been called to a plant to look at a machine vision system that “stopped working.” In most cases, nothing actually broke. The camera is fine, the software is fine, and the cables are fine. What…
Digital Twin Technology in Manufacturing: Use Cases That Actually Deliver
Digital twin technology first earned my trust on a packaging line that kept jamming at the case erector. That was the first digital twin I ever built, and nobody on the floor could agree on why the line kept stopping. The maintenance team blamed the glue…
IT/OT Convergence: Bridging Office Systems and Factory Equipment
The first time I saw the real cost of skipping IT OT convergence, I was walking a plant floor as an integration lead and the production manager handed me a clipboard. On it was a handwritten tally of how many parts the line had made that shift. Upstairs,…
Industrial Network Design: Building Reliable Connectivity for the Plant Floor
The first time I watched a production line stop because of an industrial network problem, nobody in the room thought it was a network problem. The operators blamed the PLC. Maintenance, meanwhile, pointed at the drive. Our controls integrator suspected a…
What Makes a Smart Factory? Core Technologies and Realistic First Steps
A few years ago, the operations director at a plant building commercial water heaters walked me past what he called the first phase of his smart factory: a wall of new monitors. Each screen showed a live dashboard of spindle speeds, oven temperatures,…
Industrial IoT Basics: Connecting Machines Without Overhauling Your Floor
A few years back, a facilities manager walked me past a row of rotary screw compressors and a chiller that had been running since before most of his technicians finished high school. Then he said, half joking, “Corporate wants an industrial IoT…
