More Than Just a Buzzword: How Blockchain Could Transform Manufacturing

Rarely does a concept come around with the potential to affect change in nearly all industries. In fact, it’s argued the last innovation to achieve this was the internet itself. Today, the big buzzword is “blockchain.” Blockchain has roots in cryptocurrency and is most widely understood as the foundation for Bitcoin. Far beyond backing decentralized…
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The Rise of Robotics Competitions Is Paving the Way for Future Engineers

Extracurricular school clubs and programs have always served as gateways for exposure to future careers. Students on the debate team get their first taste of arguing policy and discover their interest in politics, for example. It’s the chance to focus on something that interests them outside the core education track every student is on. Today,…
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How to Clean a Circuit Board

Cleaning a circuit board can seem like a difficult task to tackle, but these boards get dirty all the time. A slew of different materials are hazardous to the performance and safety of these devices. Watching out for such dangers and addressing the damage they cause can keep your work productive and the tools needed for the…
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Surprising Things That Can Render Your Equipment Useless

As equipment ages and becomes unsupported by the manufacturer it is only a matter of time before the machine goes down and leaves the user scrambling to find a solution. Most often this solution is repair of the broken equipment, but there are some circumstances that can complicate things if you are not ready for…
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Educating Today’s & Tomorrow’s Manufacturing Workforce

The rapidly changing manufacturing landscape has several companies struggling to fill positions across the board. A recent report conducted by the American National Standards Institute found that many companies don’t have a consistent way of weighing the importance of credentials in the candidates they interview and eventually hire. This, paired with the increase in jobs…
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The ‘Right to Repair’ Movement May Be Coming Soon to Industrial Manufacturing

A lot of buzz surrounds the “Right to Repair” on the consumer side of the economy and, for the most part, it has remained a consumer issue. However, that could change very quickly thanks to the Right to Repair movement in the agricultural sector. Lately, speculation has turned toward the manufacturing industry where machinery and…
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Human Machine Interfaces are Merging Human and Machine Like Never Before

Human machine interfaces (HMIs) sound like something out of a sci-fi movie. They bring to mind images of exoskeletons, holograms, and other things we’ve seen watching Hollywood blockbusters. But the reality of HMIs is much simpler and more practical than all that. And, as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) continues to expand, HMIs are…
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4 Reasons to Always Load Test a Power Supply After Repairs

It’s not difficult to pinpoint a faulty power supply as the reason for your equipment failure. But not all problematic power supplies have the same malfunction source. Overheating sometimes causes failure; other times, it’s a capacitor failure; and semiconductor failures are still more frequent. Getting to the bottom of a power supply failure means correctly…
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Repairs Versus Replacements: An Objective Look at Industrial Machinery Costs

When you crack your smartphone screen, you have to ask yourself an important question: Do I have it repaired, or should I replace the whole thing? While this decision is ultimately a trivial one, it does make us think more carefully about how to deal with large-scale manufacturing machine problems. What happens when your CNC…
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cloud computing for manufacturing

What Is Cloud Computing and Why Should You Be Utilizing It?

It’s impossible to be in business today without having heard about cloud computing and the applications of cloud computing for business. But what about manufacturing? Cloud computing has a number of advantages when it comes to storing, sharing and accessing data. But do these really apply to manufacturing? How Manufacturing Uses Cloud Computing The answer…
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