AMT APRIL 2015

apr15 Australian Manufacturing Technology

Your Industry. Your Magazine.

Green Manufacturing – Riding the wave PAGE 38

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Volume 15 Number 03 APRIL 2015 ISSN 1832-6080

contents

GREEN MANUFACTURING Green cutting with waterjets Clean, green… and Australian-made Clean thermal energy for clean fresh water Solar energy powers innovation Orora targets 15% energy savings FAST treatment for wastewater Making the most of hydraulic fluids Baleen Filters – All-Australian innovation

42 44 44 45 45 46 47 48

CUTTING TOOLS How machinability analysis fine-tunes metal-cutting Iscar – The hole truth A beam to cut sharp edges

52 54 56

RECRUITMENT & TRAINING What’s all this productivity stuff anyway?

60

WELDING Trends in robotic welding guns

62

ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION Four decades of robotics in Australian manufacturing NASA installs giant composite material research robot Job survival in the age of robots and intelligent machines When everything becomes automated, what’s important?

Entering a new era of human-robot collaboration

65 66 68 71 72

From the Editor From the CEO From the Industry From the Union

8 10 12 14

INDUSTRY NEWS Current news from the industry

16

PRODUCT NEWS Our selection of new and interesting products

30

ONE ON ONE John O’Brien

50

AMTIL FORUM Law Finance OHS Training

72 73 74 75

Manufacturing History – A look back in time

76

AMTIL INSIDE The latest news from AMTIL

78

apr15 AustrAliAn MAnufActuring technology

your industry. your Magazine.

Green Manufacturing – Riding the wave PAGE 38

& Training .Welding inG .Cutting Tools .Recruitment

.Robotics

.Green Manufactur

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AMT April 2015

38

Green Manufacturing – Fighting the tide Renewable energy and clean technology offer a wealth of opportunities for innovative Australian manufacturing companies. But the future of Australia’s renewable energy sector is in limbo as it awaits completion of a review of the Renewable Energy Target.

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One on One John O’Brien is the Managing Director of Australian CleanTech, and the organiser of the annual Australian Technologies Competition. He spoke to William Poole.

58

Cover Renewable energy sources such as wave power offer a wealth of opportunities for innovative Australian manufacturers. Page 38

Micron Manufacturing – A new cut above While some manufacturers were looking for a quick exit strategy, one newcomer from NSW saw the downturn as a chance to make its mark. Micron has opted to implement new technologies and a fresh approach to manufacturing.

Already it’s reaping the rewards, recently making BRW’s Fast Starters 2014 top 100 list.

FROM THE

Editor William Poole

A clean, green, lucrative machine One summer holiday when I was a kid, I was standing on the beach looking at something shining on the roof of a house on the opposite shore.

“What are those things Dad?” I said.

“Oh, they’re solar panels. They’re supposed to turn sunlight into electricity.” He paused, then added: “I don’t think they make much difference.”

Well, that was many, many years ago, and things have changed a lot since then. Most of us have met someone who has had solar panels installed on their roof. They might well have told you how much they’re saving on energy bills; some might have even been able to say the investment has already paid for itself. Some may even be talking about how it’s making them money by feeding power back into the grid. Those shiny things do indeed seem to be making a difference.

Switching from the immediate, first-hand perspective to the global picture, things also seem to be changing fast – not least in the two most populous countries on Earth. Over a five-year period up to 2015, China is investing US$294bn in renewables – around 3% of its GDP, while India is planning a US$100bn expansion of solar power by 2022. In the US, new installations of solar capacity jumped by around 50% last year.

Of course, plenty of people still deny the existence of climate change, but there are plenty of other reasons to embrace renewable energy. The jury’s still out on “peak oil”, but it seems likely we’re entering an era when fossil fuel reserves become increasingly difficult to find, and in which extraction methods such as fracking will attract ever greater controversy. Renewables offer the promise of energy self-sufficiency to countries otherwise dependent on imports, often from dubious regimes in unstable regions. And climate change aside, renewables and other forms of clean technology do provide various uncontestable environmental and economic benefits, from efficiency savings to something as simple as reduced exhaust fumes in rush hour traffic.

Besides, the denial case is essentially becoming irrelevant, because increasingly large numbers of people are just going ahead and acting, as individual consumers, or through governments or businesses. Consequently, renewables and clean-tech are going through a period of significant growth. So regardless of your position on climate change, what you cannot deny is the fact that with that growth come great opportunities. Forget about the science, think about the business case.

For instance, a recent report from Navigant Research describes “a time of high creative ferment in the wind power industry”, with innovation and Lean manufacturing fuelling a revolution in the design and manufacture of turbine blades. Meanwhile Citigroup has predicted that developments in battery storage technologies will expedite the decline of fossil fuels in the coming decade. These are just two examples from across the clean-tech spectrum where big opportunities exist for innovative, forward-thinking manufacturers.

It would help, however, if the politicians stopped arguing among themselves to support the industry. The Rudd/Gillard government tied itself in knots trying to sell the carbon tax – a measure that was unpopular with business and which arguably cost Labor the last election.

Now, as Carole Goldsmith highlights in this month’s lead article (see page 38), slow progress in the ongoing review of the renewable energy target (RET) has hampered investment and brought job cuts in Australia’s clean-tech sector.

The Government’s decision last month to shelve plans to cut the Automotive Transformation Scheme threw a welcome lifeline to manufacturers in automotive supply chains as they navigate a difficult period of transition. Resolving the RET impasse would be similarly helpful to another sector undergoing considerable, rapid change.

Renewables and clean technology are areas of enormous potential for Australia and its manufacturers. We just need government to get out of the way.

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AMT April 2015

Editor WIlliam Poole wpoole@amtil.com.au Contributors Carole Goldsmith Nina Hendy Sales Manager Anne Samuelsson asamuelsson@amtil.com.au Publications Co-ordinator Gabriele Richter grichter@amtil.com.au Publisher Shane Infanti sinfanti@amtil.com.au Designer Franco Schena fschena@amtil.com.au Prepress & Print Printgraphics Australia AMT Magazine is printed in Australia using FSC mix of paper from responsible sources FSC© C007821 Contact Details AMT Magazine AMTIL Suite 1, 673 Boronia Rd Wantirna VIC 3152 AUSTRALIA T 03 9800 3666 F 03 9800 3436 E info@amtil.com.au W www.amtil.com.au Copyright © Australian Manufacturing Technology (AMT).

All rights reserved. AMT Magazine may not be copied or reproduced in whole or part thereof without written permission from the publisher.

Contained specifications and claims are those supplied by the manufacturer (contributor)

Disclaimer The opinions expressed within AMT Magazine from editorial staff, contributors or advertisers are not necessarily those of AMTIL. The publisher reserves the right to amend the listed editorial features published in the AMT Magazine Media Kit for content or production purposes.

AMT Magazine is dedicated to Australia’s machining, tooling and sheet-metal working industries and is published monthly.

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Contact AMTIL on 03 9800 3666 for further information.

FROM THE

CEO Shane Infanti – Chief Executive Officer AMTIL

Could naval building replace automotive?

We have the potential in this country to significantly increase our naval building industry to the point that it could potentially replace the gaping hole that will be left through the demise of our automotive industry.

The Pacific Patrol Boat (PPB) Program is an Australian Defence Cooperation Program (DCP) funded activity aimed at providing participating Pacific Island Countries (PICs) with the capability to monitor and enforce their 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zones.

The initial PPB fleet of 22 vessels was gifted to the 12 PICs between 1987 and 1995. While the PPB is owned by the PICs, Australia continues to provide ongoing maintenance and logistic support for the vessels as well as training for patrol boat crews in Australia and within the region. The fleet is approaching its end of service life, which will start to occur from 2018.

On 5 March, the Government announced the Request for Tender (RFT) for the replacement – Australian-made – Pacific Patrol Boats under the Pacific Maritime Security Program, Project SEA3036 Phase 1.

This project represents a significant investment in Australian defence industry with the Australian-made patrol boats worth $594m in addition to through-life sustainment and personnel costs estimated at $1.38bn over 30 years. Building towards the release of the Defence White Paper in December last year, the Government announced a plan that will allow for a sustainable naval shipbuilding industry that supports shipbuilding jobs. It is pleasing to see the Government recognise the significant value to our nation of a skilled naval shipbuilding workforce.

The current PPB Program is the centrepiece of the Government’s engagement in the South Pacific. As part of Australia’s continued commitment to maritime security in the region, this project involves the construction in Australia of up to 21 steel-hulled replacement vessels.

The Government has committed to replacing the fleet with Australianmade vessels. This will assist PICs to continue to take an active part in securing their own extensive Exclusive Economic Zones.

The replacement vessels will be larger and more capable than the current fleet. They will also have greater seakeeping ability, habitability and endurance, and will be updated for the contemporary operating environment. Replacement patrol boats have been offered to all current participating states including Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Samoa, Vanuatu, Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Republic of Marshall Islands, Cook Islands, as well as new member Timor-Leste. These vessels will also continue to be complemented by a comprehensive program of training, maintenance and operational support for our regional partners.

Under the essential requirements of the RFT, the replacement vessels will be built in Australia, and be of steel hull construction. The key requirements are: • designed and constructed to commercial standards; • simple and cost-effective to own, operate and maintain; • weapon systems will not be fitted, but allowance made to military standard;

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AMT April 2015

• speed of greater than 20 knots in top of Sea State Four; • range of greater than 2500 nautical miles at 12 knots with 20% burnable fuel remaining; • mission duration of 20 days; • length up to 40m; • capable of operating to top of Sea State Four; • accommodation for 19 crew with 23 berths; and • the embarked Seaboat will be capable of speed greater than 20 knots, operating to top of Sea State Four, and with a crew of 6 (8 crew ‘Desirable’).

Tenders for the SEA3036-1 Project close on 17 June, with evaluation and negotiation to take place over the next 18 months. It is anticipated that contracts will be signed in the first quarter of 2017.

There are a few comments to make on this Project.

Firstly, the mandate that the replacement vessels will be built in Australia is commendable and that this is an essential part of the tender document is a stipulation that is most welcome. Defence Minister Kevin Andrews, in his press release, highlighted that the Project “will allow for a sustainable naval shipbuilding industry that supports shipbuilding jobs” and that “The Government recognises the significant value to our nation of a skilled naval shipbuilding workforce”. One only hopes that this is a deeply entrenched, philosophical and bipartisan belief and not just some nice words drafted by a departmental media advisor.

Because it is this vision and policy direction that we have been looking for our leaders to provide.

Secondly, the inclusion of through-life support to be part of the tender process is another most welcome addition. Through-life sustainment is estimated to be $1.38bn over 30 years. This will be a significant fillip for the manufacturing sector nationally and must have a greater degree of recognition placed on it when it comes to evaluating the tender applicants. By doing that, we may also be in a position to offer a solution to the many companies in the automotive supply chain looking to transition into other areas.

Lastly, if we can just get this similar line of thinking to be applied to other major naval building contracts such as the Australian Submarine Project, we may just be in a position to be recognised globally as a major player in this sector. Might I remind people that the Australian Submarine Project is the largest, single most important project ever to be undertaken in this country. With an initial cost of $20-30bn (not including through-life support estimated at 3-4 times that figure), it dwarfs past projects such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme (valued at $10bn in today’s dollars) and the Joint Strike Fighter Program ($16bn).

To think that this submarine contract may be awarded offshore, with no benefit to the nation other than a minor initial cost saving on the purchase price, is obscene.

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FROM THE

Industry Innes Willox – Chief Executive Australian Industry Group

ATS decision is good news for manufacturers The Federal Government’s announcement last month that it would dump the bill in the Senate to cut $900m of funding from the Automotive Transformation Scheme (ATS) was very welcome.

In reality, it would have amounted to a $500m cut between now and 2017, when the three car assemblers will finish local production. A further $400m will be saved in the payments that were to be made from 2018-2020 but will now be realised as Budget savings.

Over the past 18 months, Ai Group has made sure that federal politicians across the Government, Opposition and Senate crossbenchers as well as state politicians have understood the concerns of industry and the importance of the automotive supply chain to Australia’s manufacturing sector and broader economy.

“The businesses and the employees in automotive supply chains are a valuable part of Australia’s industrial ecosystem.

They have important roles to play in the restructuring of the Australian economy as we build a stronger and more resilient foundation that is less reliant on the investment in mining and energy projects.”

As a matter of principle, government funding approvals and commitments that have already been made must be honoured in the interests of promoting trust and certainty in government policy.

Honouring such funding commitments is especially important in the auto sector, where component suppliers in the automotive industry need the time and opportunity to reorient towards new markets and products before the planned closure by the car assemblers in 2017.

We will be telling the Senate inquiry on the future of the automotive industry how broader policy settings can encourage growth in advanced manufacturing and ensure skills and industrial capabilities that have been sustained by the automotive industry are not lost. And we will be urging federal and state governments on the need to act today on policy challenges, not in 2017.

The businesses and the employees in automotive supply chains are a valuable part of Australia’s industrial ecosystem. They have important roles to play in the restructuring of the Australian economy as we build a stronger and more resilient foundation that is less reliant on the investment in mining and energy projects and the high commodity prices that have featured so prominently in the last decade.

Together with the announcement maintaining ATS funding, it was good to see the Government announce $6.7m in grants for innovative investments as part of the Automotive Diversification Programme. But while the grants were welcome, the process took far too long and we are telling the Government that as they roll out future funding it needs to be more timely.

However, the challenges within the industry mean there is a need for substantial reorientation of the design of the ATS to ensure those businesses who may continue to operate can in fact do so. Ai Group believes this reorientation of the ATS must be finalised as a matter of urgency, especially given the weakening economic conditions in Australia.

Business conditions are uncertain enough already and long waits for funding are unnecessarily adding to the pressures on businesses that are working hard to transform their operations. The second round of grants opened in March and information is available at www.business. gov.au.

Reducing the funding to the industry could have had a devastating impact on Australia’s manufacturing sector, potentially derailing the supply chain before 2017, which could have forced an even earlier closure by the three automotive assemblers. The uncertainty around the future of the scheme also put unnecessary pressure on the businesses of many Ai Group members.

So the Bill’s withdrawal is good news – but there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure the bulk of the money flows fully and effectively, to the industry.

Under the current design of the ATS, the full $500m is unlikely to be drawn on by the automotive industry as the Scheme is based on vehicle production numbers, which are now winding down faster than anticipated. We believe that it is critically important that the Government recognises the challenges facing the industry and ensures this funding can effectively help give the industry a future.

To achieve this, it is important that the eligibility is such that more businesses along the supply chain are able to access it.

Ai Group believes the Government can play a constructive role in the industry transition underway for these automotive component suppliers by ensuring they are given time to restructure and diversify their businesses. Maintaining the ATS funds can enable them to do so, together with the Industry Growth Fund initiatives.

We understand that it is inevitable that some businesses will close, but speaking with our members, we know there are suppliers that can survive and continue to manufacture and employ locally if the transition in the industry is managed well.

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AMT April 2015

Your Industry. Your Magazine.

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Call Anne Samuelsson at AMTIL on 03 9800 3666, mobile on 0400 115 525 or email asamuelsson@amtil.com.au

FROM THE

Union Paul Bastian – National Secretary Australian Manufacturing Workers Union

False glimmer of hope on automotive transition Last month the Abbott Government officially announced that they would withdraw their bill to cut $900m from the Automotive Transformation Scheme (ATS).

The news sent a sigh of relief through already-struggling communities and businesses associated with the automotive manufacturing industry. But as it became apparent that the government was not proposing to reform the ATS in the process, relief quickly turned into disappointment.

Rather than representing a recognition that the ATS is crucial to supporting manufacturing businesses to 2017, or to a successful transition for the auto supply chain post-2017, the Government’s move reflected the simple fact that its bill was destined to be blocked in the Senate.

That’s where balance-of-power cross-benchers hold grave concerns for the industry and the impacts of its planned closure. Those concerned include South Australian independent Senator Nick Xenophon, a longstanding supporter of the industry, Senator Ricky Muir, a Motoring Enthusiast representative, and Palmer United Party (PUP) Senators increasingly receptive to the issues facing our manufacturing sector. Added to opposition from the Greens and the ALP, it meant the Government’s bill to slash $900m from the ATS was always going to face difficulty passing the upper house.

Into this dynamic, flowing from the closure of the three major car manufacturers, the Government announced its so-called Growth Fund. It was little more than an insult to industry and workers. This Fund includes a single $20m diversification program to transition the component industry, of which just $3m is new money while $17m has been diverted from a previous government supply chain diversification program, the Automotive New Markets Program. The unwillingness of the Government to voluntarily take industry transition seriously through its Growth Fund has made it clear to workers, industry and Senators alike that if the industry is to receive the transition support it needs, that will need to come from a reformed and retargeted ATS. This is what the AMWU has been pushing for since the Holden and Toyota closure announcements were made over a year ago.

It is clear that Australian automotive manufacturing firms possess huge potential, but they need time, new investment and access to new markets and global supply chains to secure a long-term future.

This is especially the case in the absence of a domestic assembly industry. Yet the Government has refused to sit down with workers, industry and state governments to put together a real transitional plan for the industry. It ignored the issues for as long as it could, and once the political pressure became impossible to ignore, it acted in a halfhearted, ineffective and sneaky way.

A genuine attempt to save jobs and businesses would not simply allow legislated funding under the ATS to stay in place, it would address the fundamental problem that the ATS is a policy designed to support the existing car industry. It was not designed to diversify and strengthen a largely SME-based specialist component of design, research and development, testing, advanced materials, advanced fuels and accessory industry. The ATS was meant for the industry of 2010, dominated by three large car producers, not to transform today’s industry into the industry of 2025, dominated by innovative, high-tech and internationally focused SMEs.

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AMT April 2015

“It is clear that Australian automotive manufacturing firms possess huge potential, but they need time, new investment and access to new markets and global supply chains to secure a long-term future.”

A reformed ATS would not only allow the best parts of the existing components industry to flourish in new markets and with new products and technologies, but it would also bring the capabilities and skills of the entire automotive manufacturing industry together with a shared purpose. Automotive after-market firms, manufacturers of parts and accessories, as well as truck, recreational vehicle and other specialist niche product manufacturers (themselves world leaders in numerous market segments) would be able to come together with component manufacturers and designers. They could be treated as members of the same automotive industry under the government’s flagship automotive program, which has never before happened. A level playing field would be created between all automotive manufacturing firms, reflecting a recognition of the importance of all parts of the industry, not just those presently tied to large multinational firms.

But perhaps most importantly, a reformed ATS would be our best chance of stemming the mass unemployment and mass business closures that economists tell us are an inevitable result of closure without strong policy intervention.

The logic of inaction is hard to understand. The Productivity Commission estimates the direct job losses from closure at almost 40,000, not including indirect job losses. A conservative estimate puts total job losses at 90,000 while some analysis puts it as high as 200,000. Even with the lesser estimate, the lost income tax along with the added jobless benefit payments will have a significant impact on federal budgets. These impacts don’t take into account the suffering of families, the degrading of already disadvantaged communities.

Moreover, they don’t measure the longer-term impact on the economy more broadly of lost skills, technologies, and organisational, design and production capabilities. These impacts will be profound, as they will undermine our economic growth and diversity for decades to come.

The ATS needs to be opened up to all automotive manufacturing firms, including the after-market, and it needs to have the 55/45% split between vehicle assembly and components producers removed post-2017. It needs to be refocused on supporting new products and technologies in the sector, and it needs to allow for unspent funds to roll over into the next phase.

These are all changes that are eminently sensible and implementable.

They have the broad support of business, workers and politicians of all stripes that want to see an advanced automotive industry continue in Australia, even if it doesn’t involve mass passenger vehicle assembly.

If the Federal Government genuinely wanted to support the industry and its workers through this transition, they are changes it would happily support.

industry news

Australian PMI: Manufacturing contracts again The Australian Industry Group Australian Performance of Manufacturing Index (Australian PMI) fell by 3.6 points to 45.4 in February, indicating a third consecutive month of contraction in conditions across the manufacturing sector.

Among the activity indicators, manufacturing production (down 3.7 points to 45.0) and new orders (down 3.4 points to 44.2) continued to decline, and manufacturing sales (steady at 45.3) contracted for a ninth consecutive month (readings below 50 indicate a contraction in activity, with the distance from 50 indicative of the strength of the decrease). The supplier deliveries (down 6.0 points to 46.9) and stock levels (down 4.4 points to 47.0) sub-indexes returned to contraction after brief expansions in January.

Following further falls in the dollar, only the manufacturing exports sub-index signalled expansion, for a third month (unchanged at 53.9 points). Much of this growth in exports was concentrated in the food and beverages sub-sector, one of three manufacturing sub-sectors to expand in February (down 2.8 points to 60.1). The smaller textiles, clothing & furniture (down 3.4 points to 56.0) and non-metallic mineral products (down 2.3 points to 66.2) sub-sectors also expanded for a fourth consecutive month.

“While there are bright patches, most notably for food & beverages and producers of building materials, weak domestic demand from businesses and households is offsetting the boost that many domestic manufacturers might have expected to flow from the weaker Australian dollar,” said Ai Group Chief Executive, Innes Willox. “Particular drivers of flat domestic demand include the sharp drop in mining construction; the progressive closure of automotive assembly; and weak local business investment. The lower dollar has also lifted the prices paid for imported inputs, putting additional pressure on manufacturers’ margins. On the positive side, the lower dollar and its further

depreciation since September 2014 have boosted manufacturing export volumes over recent months.”

The machinery and equipment (up 1.4 points to 43.5); printing and recorded media (up 2.2 points to 48.3); metal products (up 1.9 points to 45.0); and wood and paper products (down 3.6 points to 41.5) sub-sectors all continued to contract in February. The petroleum, coal, chemicals & rubber products sub-index (down 6.0 points to 34.7) fell to its lowest reading since June 2009, with the rapid decline in global oil prices, the ongoing decline of local mining construction activity, and the progressive closure of automotive assembly weighing on sales of Australian-made chemical inputs and components.

Manufacturing production (down 3.7 points to 45.0) declined for a fourth month, new orders (down 3.4 points to 44.2) declined for a third month, and manufacturing sales (steady at 45.3) recorded a ninth consecutive month in contraction. Manufacturing employment contracted for a second month in February (down 1.6 points to 45.9).

Input costs remain elevated (up 5.1 points to 72.4), while selling prices continued to contract (down 1.4 points to 48.3). The wages sub-index increased slightly, rising 1.8 points to 55.3.

“The weakness of domestic demand certainly provides further backing for the Reserve Bank’s decision in February to reduce interest rates,” Willox added. “And it underlines the importance of using the May Budget to provide a boost to domestic activity – including by delivering on the commitment to cut the company tax rate to 28.5% for all companies.”

Manufacturing Australia appoints Mark Chellew as new Chairman Manufacturing Australia, a coalition of Australia’s largest manufacturers, has appointed Mark Chellew as the group’s new Chairman.

Chellew brings extensive knowledge of the manufacturing sector through his role as CEO of construction and lime materials producer Adelaide Brighton. During his 13-year tenure he transformed the cement group into one of Australia’s top 100 companies with a strategy that included vertical integration of quarry and premixed cement concrete operations, diversifying the product range and enhancing Adelaide Brighton’s position in lime supply to the resource sector.

“I’m looking forward to working with the Board and members to continue to prosecute Manufacturing Australia’s policy agenda,” said Chellew. “Manufacturing has a strong future in this country if we can ensure policy settings support innovation, competitiveness and growth.”

Chellew takes over from outgoing chair Sue Morphet.

“I’m delighted that Manufacturing Australia has enlisted Mark Chellew,” said Morphet. “He will continue to ensure that Australian manufacturers are represented by a strong voice during what is an important time of reform and structural adjustment to secure the next generation of industrial employment and productivity in Australia.”

The Manufacturing Australia Board and member CEOs thanked Morphet for her leadership and guidance of Manufacturing Australia as it strengthened its role in important debates about the future

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AMT April 2015

Mark Chellew

of manufacturing in Australia. Manufacturing Australia’s members include Allied Mills, BlueScope, Brickworks, Capral, Cement Australia, CSR, Incitec Pivot, Orora and Rheem.

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industry news

Deals top $1bn at Avalon airshow Business deals worth more than $1.25bn were announced at the Australian International Airshow and Aerospace and Defence Exposition in March.

They included the signing of the multi-million dollar OneSKY contract between Airservices Australia and Thales. Other transactions included a number of civil aviation, aerospace and defence deals. Furthermore, participating companies and trade visitors were exposed to more than $4bn worth of defence contract opportunities.

Almost 600 companies came to Avalon to showcase their products and services before an informed and focussed national and international audience. Airshow CEO Ian Honnery said the Airshow and its associated Expo is a key driver for business development and economic growth in the aerospace and defence sector.

“By any standards we play an important and unique role supporting Australian industry and promoting local know-how to the international marketplace,” said Honnery. “As a not-for-profit organisation, our mission is to provide a conduit between Australian technology innovators and service providers and the key international industry decision-makers.”

Senior state and federal ministers applauded the business outcomes achieved at Avalon. Deputy Prime Minister, the Honourable Warren Truss MP, described it as a vital industry forum that was an “outstanding success”.

“The biennial event showcases exciting developments in the aviation and aerospace industries, both in Australia and from around the globe,” said Truss. “The 2015 show was no exception and, with over $1bn in aviation and aerospace business conducted at the event for the first time, the Avalon Airshow is a major economic driver for the industry, its future growth prospects and jobs.”

Both ministers attended Avalon 2015 in an official capacity.

D’Ambrosio took part in the opening ceremony before a gathering of industry and military leaders before being taken on a tour of the trade exposition. Truss officiated at the signing of contracts for the OneSKY project.

Exhibitors also gave Avalon 2015 the thumbs up. A survey of major companies participating in the event found they believed it to be an important networking and promotional opportunity and all said they would return again.

Truss’s comments were echoed by Victorian Industry Minister Lily D’Ambrosio MP, who praised the event for its global profile.

The Avalon-based event hosted 38 symposia and conferences that attracted more than 2000 delegates and speakers. These covered a range of defence, civil aviation, safety and scientific topics. In addition more than 100 official delegations, at senior military, industry and scientific level attended the event to inspect the latest technologies and seek new business liaisons.

“It brought together key industry decision makers from Government, defence and industry to discuss the latest technologies, services and products,” said D’Ambrosio. “Avalon 2015 was the major trade event for Australia’s aviation and defence industries.”

“There is more to our event than just a world famous Airshow with its spectacular flying displays,” Honnery said. “We’re serious about the business of doing business, of bringing the world to Australia and taking Australia to the world”.

Norway and Australia to cooperate on advanced maritime strike weapon for F-35A Australia will co-operate with the Norwegian Ministry of Defence to develop an advanced maritime strike weapon for the F-35A Joint Strike Fighters.

According to Defence Minister Kevin Andrews, Australian cooperation on the Norwegian Joint Strike Missile (JSM), under development by Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace, would ensure the weapon capability would be available for Air Force’s future fleet of F-35A Joint Strike Fighters.

“Australian industry will participate in the development of the JSM by providing specialist expertise in missile guidance and control technology,” said Andrews. “This agreement builds on the countries’ long-standing bilateral cooperation on research and development of Defence equipment, and acknowledges the importance of a robust maritime strike capability to Norway and Australia.”

Norway intends to procure up to 52 F-35A aircraft to enhance the ability of its Armed Forces to meet future security challenges, and will field the JSM early in the next decade. Australia has committed to procuring 72 F-35A aircraft, out of a planned 100, aimed at developing the next generation of Australian air combat power.

“Participating now in a co-operative JSM development program with Norway will maximise the cost-effectiveness of Australia’s

18 |

AMT April 2015

contribution,” added Andrews. “And ensure the weapon capability is developed and integrated onto the F-35A in the timeline required

by Australia, should the JSM be ultimately considered for acquisition

by Government later this decade.”

Australia’s first two F-35A aircraft were delivered in 2014, and are now based at the F-35 International Pilot Training Centre at Luke Air Force Base Arizona where they will be used to support the training of Australian pilots later this year.

The Truth About Compressed Air! If you think compressed air is too expensive and noisy - read this. The facts will surprise you!

Compare these Blowoffs

Facts about Blowers

source), and a blower supplied air knife (using an electric motor as a power source). Each system

Energy conscious plants might think a blower to be a better choice due to its slightly lower electrical consumption compared to a compressor. In reality, a blower is an expensive capital expenditure that requires frequent downtime and costly maintenance of

Here are some important facts:

Filters must be replaced every one to three months.

Belts must be replaced every three to six months.

edges, we took sound level measurements in free air (no impinging surface).

Typical bearing replacement is at least once a year at a cost near $1000.

Drilled Pipe

Blower Air Knife

and easy to make. For this test, we used (2) drilled pipes, each with (25) 1/16" diameter holes on 1/2" centers. As shown in the test results below, the drilled pipe performed

option. As noted below, the purchase price is high. Operating cost was considerably nozzle, but was comparable to EXAIR’s

is overshadowed by its high energy use.

its two 3" (8cm) diameter hoses requires

level is excessive - both of which violate OSHA requirements. Velocity across the entire length was very inconsistent with spikes of air and numerous dead spots.

the others. Noise level was high at 90 dBA.

•

Blower bearings wear out quickly due to the high speeds (17-20,000

•

Poorly designed seals that allow

•

environments above 50°C decrease the one year bearing life.

Many bearings can not be replaced to send the assembly back to the manufacturer.

with downtime were also negative factors.

Blowers take up a lot of space and often produce sound levels that exceed OSHA noise level exposure requirements. Air

Flat Air Nozzles

EXAIR Super Air Knife

As shown below, this inexpensive air nozzle was the worst performer. It is available in plastic, aluminium and stainless steel from

job of removing the moisture on one pass due to the uniformity of the laminar low. For this application, energy use was slightly higher than the blower but can be

from many of the same problems as the drilled pipe. Operating cost and noise level are both high. Some manufacturers

is possible. Safe operation is not an issue since the Super Air Knife can not be deadended. Maintenance costs are low since there are no moving parts to wear out.

be blocked - an OSHA violation. Velocity was inconsistent with spikes of air.

to control since mechanical adjustments are required. To discuss an application, contact:

Compressed Air Australia Phone: 1300 787 688 Int’l: +61 8 8983 3999 email: info@caasafety.com.au www.exairaustralia.com.au

The Super Air Knife is the low cost way to blowoff, dry, clean and cool.

Blowoff Comparison Comp. Air Type of blowoff

PSIG BAR

SCFM

SLPM

Horsepower Sound Purchase Required Level dBA Price

Annual Electrical Cost*

Approx. Annual Maintenance Cost

First Year Cost

$5,478

Drilled Pipes

60

4.1

174

4,924

35

91

$50

$4,508

$920

Flat Air Nozzles

60

4.1

257

7,273

51

102

$208

$6,569

$1,450

$8,227

Blower Air Knife

3

0.2

N/A

N/A

10

90

$5,500

$1,288

$1,500

$8,288

Super Air Knife

60

4.1

55

1,557

11

69

$1,066

$1,417

$300

$2,783

*Based on national average electricity cost of 8.3 cents per kWh. Annual cost reflects 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year.

industry news

National Manufacturing Week set for May Co-located with Austech, National Manufacturing Week (NMW) 2015 will take place from 26-29 May at Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre.

NMW 2015 will present an extensive exhibition as well as presentations, networking opportunities and live demonstrations to help people from all levels of all sectors of industry to gain new ideas for innovating, collaborating and building competitive strengths. More than 120 companies have confirmed their participation in the event. Many of these companies will also participate in interactive demonstrations, running on the exhibition floor throughout the four-day event, that will bring new processes and technologies to life.

NMW 2015 will also present a conference program boasting a range of world-class speakers, who will be sharing their expertise and leading discussions in two zones, the R&D Hub and Digital Manufacturing Hub. The R & D Theatre program focuses on innovation and bringing new ideas to market.

Sessions will include: Phil Timbrell of Preformed Line Products, presenting ‘Unusual approaches to getting an idea to a Fully Testable Product’; Dr John Blakemore with ‘What really are our options?’; and Mark Steiner, MD Techome and Hetech, speaking on ‘Buying or Manufacturing Offshore? What to Look Out For’. Complementary sessions in the Digital Hub will present speakers including RMIT University’s Gretchen Wilkins, Ian Nazareth profiling the Future Factory, and Enhar’s Trent Hawkins speaking on Increasing Productivity. There will also be plenty of networking opportunities, including a Happy Hour Drinks Reception at the conclusion of Day 1, bringing visitors together with speakers, exhibitors and others in a relaxed setting.

NMW will again be running in parallel with Austech, which returns following the decision in the wake of the 2013 event to move to a

NZ manufacturing rallies after two-year low New Zealand’s manufacturing sector saw improved levels of expansion in February, according to the latest BNZ-BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI).

The seasonally adjusted PMI for February was 55.9 (a PMI reading above 50.0 indicates that manufacturing is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining). This was 5.2 points higher than the previous month, and similar to the level of expansion seen in November last year.

BusinessNZ’s Executive Director For Manufacturing Catherine Beard said that the pick-up in expansion levels for the sector was pleasing to see. “After the January results that showed lacklustre expansion, the increase in February was more in line with what we’ve seen over the last two years. Although all sub-indexes were positive, the fact that new orders recovered to show its highest value for over a year should flow through into PMI results in the coming months”.

BNZ senior economist Craig Ebert added: “It’s a relief to see the PMI rebound from last month’s oddly low result. Both production and new orders jumped back up to healthy expansion territory.

These were the main culprits for bringing the overall index down in January.”

All five seasonally adjusted main diffusion indices were in expansion during February. New orders (61.5) led the way with its highest result since November 2013, while deliveries (58.2) experienced its highest value since September 2014. Finished stocks (54.3) dropped two points from January, while both employment (52.5) and production (51.8) improved from the previous month.

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AMT April 2015

two-yearly schedule. Both Austech and NMW will also be co-located with the SMART Logistics conference and Australia’s first complete safety event, the Safety First Conference & Expo, to harness shared energies from the manufacturing, transport, building & construction, government and broader industry sectors.

“There are many outstanding successes in Australian manufacturing,” says Anthony Reed, Event Director for NMW 2015. “Businesses are cracking open new markets and growing existing markets in their sectors by establishing a point of difference, through product design innovations and through their business models.

“NMW 2015 will be the forum for manufacturers who want to be part of this push: by taking advantage of the new ideas, new solutions and capabilities presented at the event. Most of all, NMW will be a forum for everyone in industry who wants to see and be inspired by new possibilities.”

Forging a future in Green steelmaking Australian smart technology that harvests blast furnace waste and converts it into a product to make cement is undergoing commercialisation trials in China where 60% of iron waste is produced.

The Dry Slag Granulation (DSG) process is the focus of an agreement signed by CSIRO and the Beijing MCC Equipment Research & Design Corporation (MCCE), to demonstrate the technology at industrial scale. The agreement is a landmark for Australia-China research collaboration, according to Jonathan Law, Director of the CSIRO Mineral Resources Flagship.

“Our collaboration is an exciting step towards the uptake of an innovation with real prospects of transforming the productivity and environmental performance of global iron smelting,” says Law. “The benefits from wide uptake of DSG technology on blast furnaces will be profound in helping the global industry to reduce water and energy use and greenhouse gas emissions while sustaining metal production.”

DSG uses a spinning disc and granulation chamber to separate molten slag into droplets, solidifies them, extracting a granulated product ideal for cement manufacture but with significantly lower emissions than conventional methods. Air is also extracted at 500-600 degrees Celsius, which can be used onsite for drying, preheating or steam generation.

The technology also saves water and eliminates underground water pollution associated with alternative wet granulation processes.

“The benefits each year from full commercialisation and adoption of DSG technology are in the order of 60 billion litres of water, 800 petajoules of heat energy and 60m tons of greenhouse gas emissions,” added Law. “Those savings are equivalent to 14% of Australia’s energy use and about 10% of our greenhouse gas emissions each year.”

industry news

Carbon Nexus to partner with DowAksa Australia’s carbon-fibre industry growth strategy has been given a boost thanks to a new partnership between Deakin University and DowAksa, one of the world’s leading science and technology companies.

The partnership includes new commitments at the University’s Carbon Nexus facility to advance worldwide market adoption of carbon-fibre composites and promote Australian expertise in materials and manufacturing technologies to industrial composite parts makers and end users such as automotive manufacturers in North America, Europe other key export markets.

DowAksa, a joint venture between Aksa, the world’s leading provider of acrylic fibre, and The Dow Chemical Company, will work with Deakin’s globally unique $34m carbonfibre research centre, Carbon Nexus, under a new agreement for collaborative research and development projects plus professional development and exchange opportunities to advance materials and manufacturing process technologies.

Deakin Vice-Chancellor Professor Jane den Hollander announced the partnership, saying: “Carbon Nexus, which we opened just on nine months ago, was strategically positioned by Deakin University as the world’s leading carbon-fibre research centre, directly tied to research and ready to work with industry on projects that will help drive the jobs of the future. What we are announcing here today is a key step in the evolution of that strategy and demonstrates the critical role universities play in supporting local economies to reinvigorate and develop new economic bases.”

Professor den Hollander said the partnership between Deakin and DowAksa would initially include collaborative carbon-fibre research

projects focused on catalysing local demand for DowAksa carbon-fibre, with eventual opportunities for adoption by industries globally.

“Carbon-fibre is one of the great new value-adding opportunities for Geelong manufacturing and building a new industry takes commitment, an unwavering focus on innovation and strong partnerships between academia and industry – and that is what goes to the heart of Carbon Nexus,” she said. “The willingness of global industry leaders like DowAksa to come on board shows Deakin University and Australia in general is at the forefront of innovation and is prepared to invest in cutting-edge projects that push scientific boundaries and provide real benefits for industry and communities.”

Carbon Nexus Director Derek Buckmaster said the DowAksa partnership was a key part of the growth plan for the research facility “We are already working in partnership with the world’s first commercial maker of single-piece carbon-fibre auto wheels, Carbon Revolution, which is based at our Waurn Ponds campus alongside Carbon Nexus, and recently expanded its operations,” said Buckmaster. “We have recently welcomed Torquay-based design engineering firm 36T to work on an advanced sports engineering project in partnership with the School of Engineering. Australian carbon-fibre parts manufacturer Quickstep is also setting up a dedicated automotive division at our Waurn Ponds campus.”

Employment outlook shows promising signs for manufacturers The latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey has revealed encouraging signs in the manufacturing sector, with a 2% increase in hiring intentions for the coming quarter compared with the last, and a 7% increase year on year.

Australian job seekers are likely to have some opportunities to pursue during the April-June time frame, according to the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey. However, the survey indicates that employer hiring intentions remain little changed in comparison to forecasts reported three months ago and last year at this time.

The survey asks the hiring intentions of over 1500 employers in Australia for the coming quarter. It found that 21% plan to increase hiring, 11% plan to decrease hiring and 67% will make no changes to their hiring plans. Once the data is seasonally adjusted, the resulting Net Employment Outlook (NEO) is +8% and is unchanged quarter-onquarter and relatively stable year-on-year.

Manufacturing showed encouraging signs of improvement, with a 2% increase quarter-on-quarter and a 7% increase year on year.

Employers in the finance, insurance and real estate sectors reported the strongest outlook, with an NEO of +18%.

Meanwhile, opportunities for job seekers are favourable in the services industry, which reported an NEO of +13% and had the strongest quarter on quarter increase of all industry sectors. Public administration, wholesale trade & retail trade and transportation and utilities employers reported the weakest outlook. Lincoln Crawley, Managing Director ManpowerGroup Australia and New Zealand says

the stable employment outlook reflects the mixed economic and market signals affecting business confidence.

“Low growth, falling wages and lower consumer confidence coupled with uncertainty about Federal Government leadership is causing many Australian employers to throttle down their hiring plans for Quarter 2 or stop them altogether,” says Crawley. “There are some bright spots. However, we’re not seeing clear signs that hiring activity will gain any additional traction in the next three months, and employers are expecting to contend with another year of certain uncertainty in Australia.”

Comparing regions, employers in Victoria and South Australia reported the most positive increase to hiring in quarter two, reporting a modest and slight increase of seven and four percentage points respectively.

The ACT market remains volatile, with employers reporting the weakest outlook of -5%, a decrease of six points quarter on quarter and 21 points year on year. Tasmanian employers reported the largest drop quarter by quarter, with a moderate decrease of -9%. Similarly, employers in Queensland also reported a moderate quarterly slide of six percentage points. Hiring activity in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and New South Wales is expected to see little change from the previous quarter, with outlooks of +15%, 5% and +1% respectively.

AMT April 2015

| 21

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industry news

Melbourne gets in gear for Australian Auto Aftermarket Expo Melbourne Exhibition Centre will this month be the venue for the 2015 Australian Auto Aftermarket Expo, the nation’s premier automotive industry show, held in conjunction with the Collision Repair Expo.

Organised by the Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association (AAAA), the biennial Expo alternates locations between Melbourne and Sydney to foster national engagement from both the industry supply chain and the workshop owners and managers who use the products and services. AAAA Executive Director Stuart Charity says the strength of the Australian automotive aftermarket industry has ensured demand from exhibitors for display space was the strongest on record.

Penrite Oil Company will launch its new Penrite 10 Tenths racing oil for motorcycles at the Expo.

“This Expo continues to be a sell-out, which means the range of new products and technologies on display for visitors is huge,” said Charity. “Together with the co-located Collision Repair Expo, it covers more than five acres.”

A special attraction of the 2015 Australian Auto Aftermarket Expo will be an expanded Industry Awards program.

“These awards recognise the very best of the new products that entered the Australian automotive aftermarket in the past two years,” said Charity. “You can see this collection of top technologies in only one place – and that is the Expo’s New Products Showcase. In addition to these award-winning products, a large number of companies will use the Expo as the launch platform for their innovative new products and services.

“The parts and maintenance sector of the $108bn Australian automotive industry represents about $34bn. Australian automotive products are also recognised internationally. AAAA member companies employ more than 30,000 people and export over $800m worth of product a year in the highly competitive global market.”

The education element of the Expo has now developed as a major attraction for business owners, managers and technicians. There will be two days of seminars delivered by industry experts covering both business operations and technical subjects. The seminar sessions are very popular so bookings are required to ensure entry.

Each year the number of industry organisations that host meetings and functions around the Expo expands.

“This is a satisfying result of the organising committee’s commitment to deliver an event run ‘by the industry for the industry’,” said Charity.

“In 2015 we have more than 30 leading industry associations, professional bodies and companies hosting activities that are co-located with the Expo. This aspect of the Expo has grown in importance with the event now recognised as the industry’s national networking hub. This huge gathering of industry identities offers an unrivalled networking opportunity. It is your once-in-two year chance to get inspiration from sharing ideas and experiences.”

The Australian Auto Aftermarket Expo will be held at Melbourne Exhibition Centire from 16 to 18 April. Visit the Expo website at www. aftermarketexpo.com.au.

Collaboration needed to bring manufacturing into the next era Guests at a recent event hosted by Swinburne University of Technology heard how collaboration is needed to bring our manufacturing industry into the next era.

The US Ambassador’s Innovation Roundtable, hosted by Swinburne, recognised Victoria’s strength in advanced manufacturing by bringing together researchers, business and government representatives along with secondary school and university students in a series of panel discussions. The diverse range of presenters highlighted USAustralian innovation success stories, and discussed the advanced manufacturing opportunities of the future.

Speakers included: the US Ambassador to Australia, John Berry; Federal Minister for Small Business, Bruce Billson; US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Manufacturing, Chandra Brown; Victoria’s Lead Scientist, Leonie Walsh; Swinburne Vice-Chancellor, Professor Linda Kristjanson; and representatives from Boeing, Lockheed Martin and the Australian Advanced Manufacturing Council.

“Manufacturing remains critically important to both the developing and the advanced world. It raises our living standards and is a source of innovation and competitiveness,” Professor Kristjanson told the audience. “New and innovative responses are needed to face the

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AMT April 2015

challenges that have come with this change and discover the opportunities that it brings. No government can do this alone. No university can do this alone.

“Only through collaboration across all levels of government, across national borders, across industry and through excellence in applied research and development can we enter the next era of global growth and innovation.”

A program of panel discussions was followed by a special forum that gave secondary and university students a chance to quiz Ambassador Berry and panelists about career pathways and opportunities in science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship in our two countries. School students also learnt from business and entrepreneurs how their studies could be successfully translated into a career in advanced manufacturing.

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government news

Andrew Stevens to chair Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre The Federal Government has named Andrew Stevens as the Chair of the new Industry Growth Centre for Advanced Manufacturing.

• Improving capabilities to engage with international markets and global supply chains.

Minister for Industry and Science Ian Macfarlane announced Chairs for three of the five Industry Growth Centres, as well as an independent Advisory Committee. A statement from the Ministry for Industry and Science said that the rollout of the Growth Centres will be steered by “a panel of highlyexperienced and internationally regarded business identities, who will provide a direct link to both the Australian and global business communities”.

“Australia is well served by a strong business community with business men and women who have both the experience and the international reputation to guide Australian industry into a new era of opportunity based on our areas of competitive strength,” said Macfarlane. “The independent Advisory Committee and the Chairs of the Industry Growth Centres will provide Australian businesses with an extended reach into expanding international markets.”

Stevens is the former Managing Director of IBM Australia and New Zealand. He was previously the Managing Partner for Global Business Services, Growth Markets, where he was responsible for the strategic direction and management for eight growth markets. He led the integration of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting and IBM in Asia Pacific and the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand consultancies in Australia and New Zealand.

In addition, Stevens has extensive board experience with the National Board of the Australian Information Industry Association, the Board of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Council of Governors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia, and the Business Advisory Council of the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales. He is a member of the Male Champions of Change and was the recipient of the Australian Human Resources Institute’s 2013 Diversity Champion CEO award.

The Industry Growth Centres Initiative is the centrepiece of the Government’s new industry policy direction and part of the Industry Innovation and Competitiveness

“The Australian Government is providing industry with an opportunity to face its challenges, take the lead and grow in areas of our economic strengths,” added Macfarlane. “[The Growth Centres] will set strategies and deliver outcomes under the four themes of encouraging collaboration and the commercialisation, enhancing workforce skills, identifying opportunities to reduce regulatory burden, and improving capabilities to engage with international markets. A significant goal for the Growth Centres will be to forge better links between industry and Australia’s world-class researchers, to maximise the return on our $9.2bn annual investment in science and research.”

Agenda. The aim of the Initiative is to lift competitiveness and productivity by focusing on areas of competitive strength, helping Australia transition into smart, high-value and export-focused industries. The Initiative will enable national action on key issues such as deregulation, skills, collaboration and commercialisation. It will drive excellence, not dependence and create an economy that ensures Australia’s ongoing prosperity.

The Growth Centres will help industry exploit new global markets and supply chains, invent and commercialise new products and services and generate new jobs in five key sectors of the Australian economy. The five key sectors are: food and agribusiness; mining equipment, technology and services; oil, gas and energy resources; medical technologies and pharmaceuticals; and advanced manufacturing.

While the Growth Centres will be flexible in their approach to addressing barriers to success, they will be tasked with looking at four broad themes: • Encouraging collaboration and the commercialisation of new products.

• Enhancing management and improving workforce skills.

• Identifying opportunities to reduce regulatory burden.

In addition to Stevens, Elizabeth LewisGray was named as Chair of the Mining Equipment, Technology and Services Growth Centre, and Peter Schutz was appointed Chair of the Food and Agribusiness Growth Centre. The Growth Centres Advisory Committee independent members are John Grill AO (Chair), Catherine Livingstone AO, Dr Andrew Liveris AO, and Ms Carolyn Hewson AO. The remaining two Chair appointments will be announced soon.

“These respected appointees have extensive industry expertise and board experience,” Macfarlane said. “They are industry leaders who will bring together key stakeholders in their sectors to work in collaboration.

These Chairs will work with their sectors to develop a proposal for their respective Growth Centres. I expect these three Growth Centres will be up and running by the middle of this year.”

The Growth Centre chairs will be working with key stakeholders in their sectors who are interested in actively contributing to the development of a Growth Centre proposal. It is expected that these stakeholders will also be interested in making a significant ongoing contribution to the operation of a Growth Centre when established.

For more information on the Industry Growth Centres Initiative visit www.business.gov.au/ IndustryGrowthCentres.

“These respected appointees have extensive industry expertise and board experience. They are industry leaders who will bring together key stakeholders in their sectors to work in collaboration.”

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AMT April 2015

government news

$16m investment to drive auto supply chain diversification The Federal Government has announced a $6m investment in projects worth $16m under an innovative transition programme to promote economic and job opportunities in South Australian and Victorian communities affected by the wind-down in domestic car manufacturing.

Minister for Industry and Science Ian Macfarlane said 12 Australian companies who are suppliers to the automotive industry will benefit from the Automotive Diversification Programme, one of the significant transition programs in the Government’s $155m Growth Fund.

“The Australian Government is working with industry and components suppliers to identify new opportunities for investment and jobs growth,” said Macfarlane. “While the global car makers have made their independent decisions to leave Australia by the end of 2017, it’s innovative investment and pursuing global supply chains that will ensure Australia’s extensive automotive skills base is retained and enhanced. This is an innovative programme that is helping companies to either expand into the international automotive market or transition into new sectors.”

The first round of grants totalling $6.72m will enable projects worth $16.2m to proceed. Macfarlane said the Australian Government would continue to support businesses, workers and communities affected by the closure of the car industry, through a comprehensive series of policies aimed at transition assistance and building a sustainable, long-term future for Australian manufacturing.

The measures were unveiled as the Government announced that it will maintain the Automotive Transformation Scheme (ATS) in its original form as legislated. The ATS will remain in place and will come to a natural conclusion at the end of 2017 when Holden and Toyota

end their Australian manufacturing operations, following Ford in 2016. The Government stated that it will continue to support component makers in transitioning their businesses to cope with the decline in production as a result of the car-makers ending manufacturing in Australia.

Industry figures welcomed the decision. Federation of Automotive Products Manufacturers (FAPM) Chief Executive Richard Reilly said: “The automotive supply chain industry has expressed a collective ‘sigh of relief’ with the announcement that the Federal Government will maintain the ATS in its original form. This is a victory for the industry and ensures companies have some clarity on their business models.”

The Growth Fund is a joint investment fund in which the Federal Government is supporting companies that are investing in their own future. The South Australian and Victorian Governments have also contributed to the fund. Applications for round two of the program are now open, with the Ministerial Guidelines expanded to include grant support for investment in state-of-the-art second-hand capital equipment and reconfiguration expenditure. Interested companies can find out more by visiting www.business.gov.au.

AMT April 2015

| 27

Tech news

Germany: High-precision radar for steel industry Large quantities of steel offcuts and scraps are left over from rolling and milling crude steel into strip steel, requiring excess edges to be trimmed off, resulting in high material losses. Plate steel roars through the rolls at speeds of up to 20 meters per second, but the strip often ends up too wide during this process. New millimeter-wave radar provides assistance by measuring the width of sheet steel during processing to an accuracy of micrometers. This permits the rolling facility to self-adjust so that less scrap is produced with considerable cost savings. The radar can be operated in any environment without having to meet additional safety requirements. Since the sensors are mounted to the sides of the rolls, the system can be integrated easily into existing plants.

Fraunhofer

Sweden: Most powerful hybrid hypercar ever produced The Swedish hypercar – the Koenigsegg Regera – which made its debut at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show, is claimed to be the most powerful hybrid hypercar ever produced. Along with a 1100HP, 5.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 fuel-burning engine, there’s also a 700HP electric motor. Koenigsegg claims that in tandem, the two motors can produce more than 1500HP. Its 9 kWh battery pack can travel up to 50kms in pure electric mode, after which the car must be charged via either its onboard gas engine or a through an external plug. Koenigsegg is expected to produce up 80 Regeras in a limited run.

Business Insider

UK: New paint makes tough self-cleaning surfaces A new paint that makes robust self-cleaning surfaces has been developed. The coating can be applied to clothes, paper, glass and steel and when combined with adhesives, maintains its self-cleaning properties after being wiped, scratched with a knife and scuffed with sandpaper. Self-cleaning surfaces work by being extremely repellent to water but often stop working when they are damaged or exposed to oil. The new paint creates a more resilient surface that is resistant to everyday wear and tear. The study shows how the new paint made from coated titanium dioxide nanoparticles can give a wide-range of materials self-cleaning properties, even during and after immersion in oil and following damage to the surface.

University College London.

Australia: Green alternative for precious metal leaching An alternative precious metal processing technique that avoids the use of toxic cyanide has been developed by researchers at WA’s Curtin University. Several jurisdictions world-wide have banned the use of cyanide for industrial applications; this adds further costs as miners are required to comply. Since 2012, a process to replace the use of cyanide with thiosulphate has been commercially trialled in the US. However, this is a costly and complex process, the chemicals are difficult to store, and it cannot be used with all ore types. Curtin researchers have developed an alternative glycine-based leaching system that is nontoxic, cheap and readily available – and can be used for a number of precious metals. The novel system uses a unique blend of chemicals, and is applicable for vat, heap and in-situ leaching. By removing the

28 |

AMT April 2015

cost and legislative barriers associated with the use of cyanide, the new process could open up many marginal gold and other precious metal reserves worldwide. “Glycine is benign in the safety, health and environmental sense,” Curtin University Chair of Extractive Metallurgy Professor Jacques Eksteen said.

Curtin University

Australia: Unmanned aircraft breakthrough Aircraft researchers have made what’s believed to be a world-first breakthrough for small unmanned aircraft under 20kg, developing an automated emergency landing system (AELS) that has enabled the aircraft to land on its own. Technology had been tested and proven on both Qld. University of Technology’s Cessna aircraft as well as onboard a small UA - taking the technology further than elsewhere in the world. Using the Detect, Think, Act system, the aircraft, simulating engine failure while in flight, was able to detect possible landing areas, select the best one, then control the aircraft to a safe touchdown. The research and test flights were conducted by QUT as part of Project ResQu, a $7m project funded by the Queensland Government, QUT, CSIRO, BR&T-Australia and Insitu Pacific, which aimed to fast-track the development of smart technologies to enable unmanned aircraft to fly safely in civil airspace.

Queensland University of Technology

International: New manufacturing technique for cheaper titanium Titanium is costly to manufacture. Now, a new manufacturing technique could reduce the expense. The new process - developed by SRI International - takes fewer steps, uses less energy, and produces titanium powder, rather than ingots. The powder can be pressed and fused into something that’s very close to the shape of the final product, which reduces the amount of machining required. The new produces uses plasma arcs to split titanium-chlorine bonds in titanium chloride, producing a vapour which quickly solidifies, forming titanium powder.

MIT Technology Review/Gizmodo

Australia: World-first jet engine 3D-printing breakthrough Monash University’s Centre for Additive Manufacturing led a world-first project. In collaboration with CSIRO’s Lab 22, Monash and Deakin universities and Amaero Engineering, components for the world’s first 3D printed jet engine were produced. The components aren’t just remarkable because they’ve been 3D-printed, but because they were created by using a range of different additive manufacturing technologies and successfully combined into a finished product. The Arcam Electron Beam Melting printer in combination with cold spray technology was used to produce a range of components for the engines, which also used a new titanium metal powder that performs better and is cheaper, proving that test parts can be produced in days instead of months. Not only can the printed parts be made as strong as the traditionally made parts, but due to the ability to create complex shapes, they can be made with a honeycomb structure providing the strength required at a fraction of the weight. Possibly as much as 15% lighter for the same sized engine. The breakthrough has captured the attention of Airbus, Boeing and Raytheon. An opportunity for Australia’s declining manufacturing industry, the project was funded by the Science Industry Endowment Fund which invests in scientific research for the national benefit.

CSIRO/Mixed

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product news

NCCS introduces SolidWorks 2015 NCCS, a leading provider of CAM/CAE solutions in Australia, has stepped up its presence in the 3D CAD software arena by expanding its product portfolio with Dassault Systemes’ SolidWorks.

Based in Keysborough, Victoria, NCCS held an event in early March to mark the launch of SolidWorks 2015, a comprehensive design solution that enables users to create, validate, communicate and manage their product designs. The launch event saw the presence of more than 50 industry experts and design engineers from various fields including machinery, material handling, plastics, consumer, power and process, education, energy, and electrical and electronics.

SolidWorks 2015 covers a comprehensive array of aspects of the product development process, offering an intuitive, integrated 3D development environment that includes 3D design, simulation, electrical design, product data management and technical communication. In addition, with its new Collaborative Sharing feature, SolidWorks 2015 enables access to Dassault Systemes’ 3DExperience platform and its cloud-based capabilities. Designers and engineers can span multiple disciplines with ease, shortening the design cycle, increasing productivity and collaborating to deliver innovative products to market faster.

SolidWorks 2015 not only offers various key enhancements requested by its entire user base, but also delivers solutions for a wide array of industries and markets. For example, SolidWorks users will be able to easily enhance the aesthetics of consumer products and apparel, or to simulate construction machinery in order to build infrastructure and machine tools better than ever before.

NCCS held an event in Keysborough, Victoria, to mark the launch of SolidWorks 2015.

“With more than 200 enhancements in SolidWorks 2015, NCCS can now truly address our customers’ concerns about reducing their operating costs and improving their market positioning, which will help them grow and deliver better value to their market spaces,” said NCCS Director Stalin D’Souza. “The inclusion of Dassault Systemes SolidWorks software has bought a great synergy to our product portfolio, through which we can help our customers to grow both locally and in the global market place.” www.nccs.com.au

T-Bursting through difficult-to-cut materials In order to meet the machining needs of difficult-to-cut materials such as titanium, Inconel and other heat resistant alloys, TaeguTec has introduced the T-Burst high-pressure coolant tool for groove-turning and parting.

In parting and grooving applications, the ability to supply highpressure coolant generates good chip breaking, reduced cycle times and increased tool life on most materials. However, on difficult-tocut materials, the rules change because it becomes harder to ensure effective chip breaking specifically with standard external coolant in low feed rate operations.

The new addition to the T-Burst line fixes those challenges and helps machinists excel in creating superior highly productive parts at a lower cost when working with exotic materials under low feed rate conditions. With the coolant outlet located on the upper jaw, directly over the insert, TaeguTec’s T-Burst high-pressure coolant, which is supplied through the tool holder’s internal coolant channel, shoots out with enough force and speed to the insert’s cutting edge to allow for lubrication of the material and cutting tool, as well as effective cooling, excellent chip breaking and increased tool life while preventing builtup-edges.

The T-Burst high-pressure line is available in two tool holder types: TTER/L-TB, TTER/L-SH-TB holders and TQHR/L QuadRush tool holders. Square shank TTER/L-TB holders are available in both 20mm and 25mm, while the inserts’ width of cut ranges from 3.0mm-8.0mm.

TTER/L-SH-TB holders come in 12mm and 16mm square shank size, and feature a side clamping design for fast and easy indexing on Swiss-type tooling machines. The square shank QuadRush holders are available in 12mm, 16mm, 20m and 25 mm while the inserts’ depth of cut ranges up to 5.2mm.

The T-Burst tool holders apply through-coolant at up to 340 bar and achieve significantly improved tool life compared with normal

coolant pressure external type tool holders. In quality tests designed to compare the effectiveness of the T-Burst line’s groove-turning and parting operations on difficult-to-cut materials against tools that supply normal external coolant of 10 bar, TaeguTec increased tool life on grooving operations conducted on Inconel 718 by as much 75 % in one test, by 400% while machining titanium alloy on another test, 50% on stainless steel, and an incredible increase of 800% tool life on aluminium alloy.

On a separate comparison test using the highly-popular QuadRush insert series, the T-Burst line increased tool life by 180% versus normal external coolant tools while performing shallow grooving operations. www.taegutec.com

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Product news

RS Components launches affordable 3D printer for rapid prototyping RS Components has announced the availability of the first RS brand 3D printer, offering professional-quality specifications and exceptional print output for rapid prototyping at a highly affordable price point.

Targeting a wide range of users including electronic and mechanical engineers involved in design, prototyping and research and development, as well as enthusiasts and those in education, the new RS IdeaWerk 3D printer is available now at a price of $1,230. According to RS Components, this makes the RS IdeaWerk approximately 30% cheaper than other 3D printers in its class.

The new RS IdeaWerk employs the highly popular fused deposition modelling (FDM) process and offers high-level specifications, including a build volume of 150mm by 150mm by 140mm, and a minimum layer thickness resolution of 0.18mm. The single-head system accepts 1.75mm-diameter PLA filament materials in a variety of different colours, also available from RS Components.

The use of environmentally friendly PLA material means there is no toxicity, chemical pollution or unpleasant smells, making the RS IdeaWerk highly suitable for use in the home as well as in an industrial environment. In addition, the machine’s very low print noise makes it ideal for use in the office, home or classroom. Designed to handle the toughest print jobs and offering a robust and sturdy construction, the RS IdeaWerk is easy to assemble and use and also lightweight enough to be portable. The machine has a footprint of 211mm by 403mm, is 298mm high, and weighs only 7.5kg.

The RS IdeaWerk 3D printer has been designed to be extremely easy to use and can be operated in either online or offline mode, either with or without a PC, with connectivity via SD Card or USB. The printer is compatible with Mac OS and Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8/8.1, with no additional software or accessories necessary.

The IdeaWerk 3D printer augments a growing range of rapidprototyping machines now available from RS Components. The portfolio includes other highly affordable 3D printers from 3D Systems, Ultimaker, BEEVERYCREATIVE and RepRapPro. www.rs-online.com

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product news

HBM unveils new strain gauge measuring amplifier Global test and measurement specialist HBM has released a new strain gauge measuring amplifier –the MX1615 – designed to provide exact results for stress loading.

The MX1615 is part of HBM’s QuantumX measuring system. It features universal strain gauge inputs, which enable it to cover the full range of tasks in strain gauge measurement. The high channel density means 16 strain gauge channels can be connected to the MX 1615 in a various configurations including full-bridge, half-bridge or quarterbridge, in a three-wire and patented Kreuzer 4-wire circuit. In addition, all channels can be used to record standardised voltage signals of ±10V as well as temperatures with a Pt100 sensor.

“Strain values are the only parameters that are reliably predictive in terms of stress loading of printed circuit boards, and HBM’s strain gauges are designed to provide exact results,” says Tinh Ngo, Sales And Application Engineer, HBM Australia. “They’re vital tools to test printed circuit boards, from those in automobiles, commercial vehicles or smart phones. Even slight cracks can cause the entire electronics system to fail.”

Vibration and thermal deformation can cause small cracks between the board and the component, which can lead to failure. For example, cars drive over cobblestone pavements and commercial vehicles make their way around bumpy construction sites; in summer they’re exposed to heat and in the winter to low temperatures. All of this places stress on the circuit boards – which is where strain gauges come in.

“Manufacturers are increasingly requiring their suppliers to prove the mechanical stability of printed circuit boards, and strain values are the only parameters that are reliably predictive in terms of the stress loading,” says Tinh. “They can be measured using strain gauges, which are placed directly on the circuit board to do this.”

Cars and commercial vehicles are just one field of application where measuring mechanical loading is useful. Trains and laptops are also continuously exposed to vibration.

“The MX1615 is a tool which can be used by myriad industries from automotive to aviation, energy to engineering, manufacturing to mining, not to mention marine, defence, power and energy, gas, water and oil. Anything where printed circuit boards are used,” Tinh explains.

HBM provides the complete measurement chain for such applications, from the strain gauge to the QuantumX MX1615 amplifier and Catman AP software for data acquisition and analysis. Using the MX1615 means the user can parameterise each channel individually. And all 16 channels are equipped with 24-bit AD converters. The excitation voltage of the strain gauge channels can be selected for each channel as a carrier frequency or DC voltage.

In addition, the data rate of 19.2kHZ and the maximum bandwidth of 3kHZ per channel cover a wide analysis range. The MX1615 can be combined with other modules from HBM’s Quantum X series in a distributed measurement architecture – for instance with analog outputs, digitial inputs/outputs, CAN bus or EtherCAT connection.

Ethernet TCP/IP is used to transfer data to a PC. www.hbm.com/en

Walter and Mapal link up in Australia Mapal Australia and Walter Tools have entered into an arrangement for Mapal to distribute and support the Walter range of tools for the Australian market.

With the two companies joining forces in Australia, customers will benefit from Mapal’s extensive network of highly experienced sales engineers, as well as the comprehensive product portfolios of Walter, Walter Titex, Walter Prototyp and Walter Valenite.

“This partnership is the perfect fit for Mapal Australia,” said Mike Fullerton, General Manager at Mapal Australia. “The quality of the Walter product and the extensive range available really complements the Mapal product range and allows Mapal Australia to provide our customers with an extensive selection of product for all applications, and the ability to utilise Mapal as a one-stop-shop for their tooling and cutting fluid needs. We are very excited to be working with Walter and look forward to a long-term partnership.”

Fullerton cited a number of ways in which Australian customers in the metal-cutting space would immediately benefit from the new partnership by having immediate access to the Walter range through Mapal. These include Walter’s M4000 series system tools, which can be used universally for a wide variety of machining

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requirements, reducing complexity and susceptibility to errors in production, as well as the Walter Titex DC170 solid carbide drill.

Customers would also benefit from the extended range of Walter Cut-SX single-edged grooving system, which makes it possible to achieve deeper grooving and parting-off cuts because cutting depth is no longer limited by insert length, while a new self-clamping system ensures that the cutting inserts are securely located, even under high stress.

As a wholly owned subsidiary of the prestigious German tooling company Mapal, Dr Kress KG, Mapal Australia, has distributed metal cutting tools and metal working fluids since 1968 to the Australian manufacturing industry. Walter, with headquarters in Germany and a product range of around 49,000 catalogue tools for milling, drilling, turning and threading, is a complete service provider for the metalworking industry. www.mapal.com.au

Deep Hole Drilling Specialists Gun Drills: Ejector Heads BTA Heads

with brazed heads with indexable inserts & guide pads double tube system single tube system

Deep hole drilling machines The machines are built in Germany, to German Standards, and will be equipped to your requirements.

Tibo can offer a delivery time for a new machine of 4-6 months ex works, depending on the layout.

There are several TIBO machines in production in AUS and NZ, with more on order. Several customers have purchased their second machine now.

Feel free to contact TIBO direct: www.tibo.com

TECO Tooling has a full range of Botek Drills in stock, in addition to airfreight shipments arriving weekly. Contact us for catalogues and advice.

Tel: (03) 9775 0522

www.teco.net.au

product news

Simplicity meets productivity – Mitsubishi reach truck from MLA MLA Holdings, exclusive supplier of Mitsubishi forklifts in Australia, has announced an extension of its warehouse product range with the release of a brand new reach truck.

The warehousing and distribution industry has long desired a reach truck that’s unproblematic to operate and maintain yet excels in productivity. The Mitsubishi RBF14-20CA is a no-nonsense, uncomplicated reach truck that tops the performance of any competitor on the market.

“The RBF14-20CA from Mitsubishi is incredibly user friendly, it’s built on simplicity without compromising on performance,” says Gary Hodge, National Sales & Marketing Manager at MLA Holdings.

“MLA is very pleased that we are now able to offer this product to the Australian market.”

Hydraulics, travelling, and power steering functions on the RBF1420CA have been integrated into one AC control system, which makes the truck much smoother to operate. The simplicity of the controls allows the operator to be more focused and productive.

Visibility is also significantly enhanced on the RBF. The free-lift cylinder is mounted diagonally and away from the mast symmetry, allowing for unflawed forward view.

Hypertherm launches Powermax30 AIR Hypertherm has announced the introduction of the Powermax30 AIR, a new portable air plasma system featuring an internal compressor that offers greater convenience for on-the-go cutting.

With the built-in compressor and the ability to operate on both 120V or 240V lines, the Powermax30 AIR is a highly versatile system that enables metal cutting just about anywhere. Weighing only 13.5kg, the Powermax30 AIR provides 30 amps of output, and has the highest power-to-weight ratio of any system in its class.

This high power-to-weight ratio is due in part to several engineering advances, including an all-new patent-pending consumable design that optimises airflow from the compact internal compressor. Coupled with a proprietary and highly-effective moisture removal system, the Powermax30 AIR provides excellent cut quality and performance in hot and humid conditions.

The Powermax30 AIR offers greater versatility and convenience with a ‘Plug-and-Use’ model that allows the system to be used anywhere with just an electrical power point, even in remote and non-industrial environments. It also helps users to cut costs thanks to the elimination of an external compressor. The Powermax30 AIR is highly portable and can be used in a variety of settings, both indoors and outdoors www.hypertherm.com/en

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Performance standards were not compromised when making the RBF14-20CA. AC motor technology delivers a smooth and powerful drive, while 360-degree steering gives the truck a tight turning radius, creating space efficiency in busy warehouse environments.

The RBF14-20CA reach truck is available in three different models with a maximum lift height of 10m. The RBF14-20CA is the latest addition to MLA’s extensive range of warehouse, electric, and engine forklifts. www.mlaholdings.com.au

Pitbull Clamp – multiple benefits for milling Dimac Tooling is the sole agent in Australia and New Zealand for Mitee-Bite’s Pitbull Clamp.

Mitee-Bite Products are the innovator of compact, low-profile edge clamps geared towards improving production in difficult workholding applications. As the name implies, the Pitbull Clamp provides the highest holding force clamp available, coupled with the added benefit of also being the lowest profile.

The low profile provides a significant boost to productivity with more parts being able to be held under the spindle. Companies using the clamp report the doubling of parts that operators can load and unload every run. The clamps are also easy to install, which makes creating fixturing easier for both the programmer and the operator.

Manufactured in the US, the Pitbull Clamp is available in five sizes and several styles: a tool steel knife edge for aggressive stock removal; a tool steel blunt edge for general purpose; a brass version to help prevent marring the workpiece and a machinable version. The machinable version is made of tool steel and heat-treated for long life. Additional material on the clamping face allows for machining a radius. It is available in two sizes with 26,000Nm and 50,000Nm of holding force. A dowel pin is included in each package to locate the clamp while machining a radius. www.dimac.com.au

Product news

Versatile bearing pushers optimise plant maintenance When servicing large machinery, the importance of correct bearing installation is paramount.

According to bearing manufacturers, incorrect installation is the direct cause of 16% of all failures.

The use of hydraulic bearing pushers provides a precise, safe and time-saving method of removing and replacing bearings in plants widespread in the manufacturing, mining and energy, materials handling and ports facilities, oil and gas, and primary processing sectors. Bearing pushers also have wide usage in marine applications such as driveshaft, rudder and propeller maintenance.

Available in stock sizes from M60 to M400 with capacities from 230kN to 1800kN, Technofast EziTite bearing pushers offer the ideal means of mounting or dismounting rolling element bearings and other components. Such bearings are widely employed in machinery such as conveyor drives, crushers, ball mills, stacker reclaimers, milling and rolling equipment, gearboxes, turbines, drilling equipment, and pumps, fans, blowers and marine applications.

Rather than relying on heat or oil injection processes, the EziTite bearing pusher uses high-pressure hydraulic oil (typically at 700 bar) to precisely drive the bearing onto the shaft’s bearing seat. Use of the EziTite bearing pusher is simple, with the assembly screwed into place and energised with a suitable pressure pump. The internal pressure thus generated acts upon an annular piston to press against bearing’s inner race, driving the bearing onto the shaft.

Once the bearing has been driven into place, the pressure is released and the EziTite bearing setter then removed. A standard locking nut and washer are then used to prevent the bearing from moving from its seat during operation and maintain correct operating preload.

“The principle of the EziTite bearing pusher’s operation is similar in operation to the standard Technofast EziTite Hydraulic Nuts (without the mechanical locking ring), which are used in missioncritical applications globally where speed, precision and avoidance of downtime are paramount,” says Technofast CEO John Bucknell.

“The EziTite Bearing Pusher does not require the mechanical lock ring feature as it is used as a tool rather than a tensioning device, making it simpler and cost-efficient.

“We can also typically produce these specialised hydraulic nuts in as little as two weeks, or about half the time typically taken in Australia for such a nut, further reducing potential downtime. Like Technofast’s globally proven ranges of EziTite, EziJac and CamNut products, they are easy to fit and remove with little physical effort, optimising safety and also minimizing downtime.” www.technofast.com

Complete Machine Tools Pty Ltd

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AMT April 2015

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green manufacturing

Renewable energy and clean technology offer a wealth of opportunities for innovative Australian manufacturing companies. But are political uncertainty and government indecision holding the sector back? By Carole Goldsmith.

The future of Australia’s renewable energy sector is in limbo as it awaits completion of a review of the Renewable Energy Target (RET). Mid-February marked one year since the Federal Government commenced its review. According to the Clean Energy Council (CEC), peak body for the industry, the ongoing delay has caused investment to dry up and led to widespread job losses.

The CEC is committed to accelerating the transformation of Australia’s energy system to one that is smarter and cleaner.

It represents and works with hundreds of leading businesses operating in solar, wind, energy efficiency, hydro, bio-energy, energy storage, geothermal and marine, along with more than 4000 solar installers.

CEC Chief Executive Kane Thornton has called on the Government to end the political impasse over the scheme and recommit to the RET. This will allow the industry to get on with the job of generating billions of dollars of investment and creating thousands of new jobs.

Policy Manager Russell Marsh advises that the CEC’s main task now is to get the Government to resolve the RET review: “There is pressure on the Government and the Labor opposition to get a resolution, so that uncertainty in the industry can be cleared, and investors again see the renewable energy sector as a safe investment zone.”

“Investment in large-scale renewable energy has been cut by almost 90% and many of the sector’s 21,000 employees have already lost their jobs,” says Thornton. “The renewable energy industry is calling on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to resolve the RET review. This uncertainty has damaged investments and spooked investors, with many of them losing confidence in Australia as a safe investment destination.”

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What does the CEC want the RET to be? According to Marsh, it should be left alone and not changed at all.

Clean Energy Council Chief Executive Kane Thornton.

“The current target for largescale renewable energy is 41,000GWh in Australia by 2020,” he says. “This was set by the previous Labor Government in 2010. The RET Review Committee concluded that the current target won’t push up power prices.”

Clean Energy Council Policy Manager Russell Marsh.

green manufacturing Carnegie’s CETO technology is different from other wave energy devices as it operates underwater, with giant metal buoys generating zero-emission electricity.

Marsh adds that there is still funding for the industry from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). However, since the RET review started just over a year ago, any non-government investor looking to invest in renewable energy project will find it hard to get a clear idea of the potential return because the target still has not been set.

A CETO Unit 1 awaiting deployment.

“As an example, there are a number of companies that develop wind farms and they need funding from banks or other financial institutions,” Marsh explains. “However they can’t tell their investors how the money will be paid back. The industry is facing an uncertain future and we need the Government to resolve the review and set the new RET as soon as possible.”

AMT contacted the Federal Department of the Environment to ask when a decision would be made on the RET. A spokesperson responded: “We want to provide a sustainable future for the industry. There are challenges with the current structure and we are seeking to resolve these and provide certainty for the sector by achieving a bipartisan position.”

Marsh highlighted two CEC member companies that have been actively involved in innovative renewable energy projects: Carnegie Wave Energy, and Keppel Prince Engineering.

Wave energy for Australia’s largest naval base The official launch of Carnegie Wave Energy’s Perth Wave Energy Project in February was an important milestone for wave energy technology, and for the future of Australian energy generation. The Perth Project will provide wave-generated renewable energy to Australia’s largest naval base, HMAS Stirling on Garden Island.

“Wave energy is an emerging technology with huge potential, and Carnegie is one of the companies leading the way with this worldfirst project using CETO technology,” says Thornton.

The Perth Project was officially ‘switched-on’ in mid-February by Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane and the commanding officer of HMAS Stirling, Captain Angela Bond. It is the only wave power plant in the world to operate multiple wave units. The Department of Defence is purchasing all of the Project’s power for use by HMAS Stirling. The system will also desalinate ocean water to be supplied to HMAS Stirling.

Continued next page

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green manufacturing

A CETO 5 unit during installation at the Perth Project site.

Continued from previous page

Fremantle-based Carnegie’s CETO technology has been under development for approximately10 years and has had some $100m invested in its commercialisation over this period. The CETO system is different from other wave energy devices as it operates under water, where it is safer from large storms and invisible from the shore.

Carnegie’s Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Fiévez explains about the CETO 5 technology used in the Perth Wave Energy Project.

“Three fully submerged giant metal buoys, each seven metres in diameter, drive seabed pump units to deliver high pressure fluid onshore,” says Fiévez. “This moves along a subsea pipe to standard hydroelectric turbines, generating zero-emission electricity.

“The buoys rest about a metre below the ocean’s surface and are connected to a polyester mooring rope which links to the system’s pump, attached to a foundation on the sea bed. In a wave, the water molecules pass from one side of the buoy to the other, moving in a circular orbit.”

Fiévez adds that seawater moves in and out of the buoy’s six air components, providing air and buoyancy upwards and downwards.

The water that comes out of the buoys goes through a hydraulic module and into a high-pressure pipeline. This is connected to a generator on the shore, creating renewable wave energy. The high-pressure water will also be used to supply a reverse osmosis desalination plant, replacing or reducing reliance on greenhouse gasemitting, electrically-driven pumps usually required for such plants.

When asked how the system affects ocean life, Fiévez says: “We have some amazing videos that show the large amount of fish attracted to the buoys. Fish always flock to large objects in the ocean as this keeps them feeling safe.”

All of Carnegie’s manufacturing is outsourced via tender. Although the company tries to use local companies, Fiévez says that it is sometimes difficult to get components for the CETO system in Perth.

“It is more advantageous to have it built in Victoria and transported across,” he explains. “As an example, Victorian firm Keppel Prince Engineering makes the piles used in our system. The piles are driven into the ocean bed, 25 metres under the ocean.”

These piles are the foundation for the project, providing an anchor in the seabed to keep the units in place.

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The Perth Wave Energy Project was switched on in February by Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane (second left), with ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht, and Carnegie Wave Energy’s Dr Michael Ottaviano and Grant Mooney.

While the delay in the Government setting the new RET has not directly affected Carnegie, Fiévez adds: “It is certainly having an effect on future and existing manufacturers of our system. There has also been major reduction in investments in renewable energy companies.

This lack of decision on the RET is a major problem for the industry.”

The CETO technology has been independently verified by French company EDF-Energies Nouvelles, a leader in the production of electricity from renewable sources, and by the French naval contractor DCNS. Carnegie worked in partnership with EDF developing CETO 4 in 2009. EDF has the rights to develop CETO renewable energy projects in the northern hemisphere.

Carnegie currently employs 40 people, with the majority involved in the CETO project. According to Fiévez, 15 of these employees work in R&D, including a physicist, a hydrodynamics specialist, a mathematician, and oceanographer, plus mechanical and electrical engineers.

“We do all the design, engineering integration and specifications for the CETO system at our Fremantle head office,” says Fiévez.

green manufacturing

Grinding to prepare for an internal longitudinal weld in a Keppel wind tower.

ARENA provided $13m in funding support for the Perth Project.

Planning and design work has begun on Carnegie’s next-generation CETO 6 technology, supported by $11m of ARENA funding. These larger units are aiming to deliver around four times the amount of power to HMAS Stirling that CETO 5 is currently providing.

“Our plans with CETO 6 are to build another wave energy generator around three kilometres out in the ocean from the present location and three times deeper,” says Fiévez. “We are also setting up an office in the UK in the future to build the next CETO system.”

Leading the field in wind tower fabrication Keppel Prince Engineering (KPE) is Australia’s largest wind tower manufacturer. KPE specialises in the construction, fabrication and maintenance of industrial structures and equipment from wind farms to bridges. Among KPE’s recent large renewable energy projects are the construction of the Gullen Ranges Wind Farm, west of Goulburn, NSW. Completed in late 2014, KPE installed 14 wind turbines, and also manufactured and delivered 17 tower embeds and 17 towers.

In 2010 the company also fabricated 80 of the 140 wind towers at the Macarthur Wind Farm in south-west Victoria, the largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere. Each tower was approximately 80 metres high and weighed around 160 tons. Located south of Glenthompson in western Victoria, the 32-turbine Oaklands Wind Farm provides 63MW of renewable energy to its customers. In 2012, KPE manufactured the main body of the tower that supports the nacelle, hub and blades.

Each tower stands at a height of 80 metres.

Based in Portland, Victoria, KPE is a major employer for this small regional town. Its head office, manufacturing plant and engineering operations are located across 120 acres of land. The company employs 265 people, comprising engineers, project managers, technicians, tradespeople, apprentices and support staff.

KPE Managing Director Steve Garner explains the process used in producing wind-towers that measure from 30 to 92 metres in length: “Australian high-grade steel plates are cut, rolled, welded and then painted in a horizontal position. During the painting process, they are rotated on large rollers and our employees paint them manually. This is labour-intensive work.”

Back grinding to prepare for internal submerged arc welding.

“Renewable energy companies like ours are in a state of limbo and this is not good for business,” says Garner. “Due to the Federal Government’s delay in letting us know the new RET, we have had to reduce our employee numbers from 380 to the current 265 employees. This is difficult for a small country town like Portland to lose so many local jobs.

“We don’t have any major renewable energy projects at present, apart from a couple of regional commercial solar projects. Also we are supplying and installing some domestic solar systems in western Victoria.”

Fortunately KPE’s work in a wide range of other sectors helps keep the company afloat.

“These other larger parts of the company are going very well,” says Garner. “Other smaller renewable energy companies, however, do not have other parts of their business to fall back on, so many are going broke.”

KPE invested $12m in plant and equipment in 2003 for its ongoing wind-tower manufacturing operations. When the RET is set and wind-tower production starts up again, Garner believes this has the potential to create another 200 jobs at its plant.

Garner’s message to the CEC, the Government, the opposition and all involved: “Get this deal on the RET done and let us know what the new target will be, so we don’t have more companies going broke.

“The renewable energy industry was going great before the GFC. This created a lot of incentives and money for investors. With the RET review happening every two years, investors are now hesitant to invest in the industry. There are many overseas investors wanting to come in and financially support Australian renewable energy projects.

We need both sides of the Government to decide on the new RET to encourage investment in renewable energy and get the sector moving again.” www.environment.gov.au www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au www.carnegiewave.com www.keppelprince.com

KPE also manufactured the underwater piles for the Carnegie Wave Perth project, and is active across a number of other sectors, including telecommunications, infrastructure, agriculture, marine, waste-water and electrical. Garner speaks proudly about some of the company’s current projects: “We are handling the mechanical and electrical maintenance on-site for Alcoa’s Portland Aluminium, and we’re building communication towers for Telstra’s network around Australia.”

However, KPE’s wind tower production and installation has come to a standstill amid prolonged uncertainty over the RET review. So has the company’s planned large-scale expansion into solar, wave and hydro energy.

Installing an access door frame into the base section of a wind tower.

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green manufacturing

Green cutting with waterjets Are you being green when operating your abrasive jet? Can you feel righteous, like someone getting high fuel economy in his car, or should you feel a bit guilty about enjoying your high productivity? What are the environmental impacts of abrasive jet cutting? By Dr John H Olsen.

Abrasive waterjet cutting inherently is an environmentally friendly or green process. Unlike traditional mechanical cutting systems, waterjet cutting requires no cooling or lubricating oils, so there are no chemically contaminated chips to dispose of. Unlike thermal processes such as plasma or laser, waterjet generates no noxious fumes during the cutting process. The cutting “tools” – water and garnet abrasive – are environmentally benign and available worldwide with minimal pre-processing.

The abrasive waste generally is inert garnet with a small fraction of particles from the material being cut. This means that unless the material being cut is a highly hazardous material, such as lead, the waste abrasive can be disposed of safely at a dry landfill, with no processing and no environmental risk.

The abrasive waterjet’s narrow cut width allows for close nesting of parts to maximise material utilisation. Moreover, the minimal scrap that remains is free of chemical contamination and can be recycled, which results in raw material, energy, and cost savings for recyclable materials such as aluminium, steel, and titanium.

The impact of abrasive jet cutting Abrasive jet cutting consumes abrasive, electric power, and water in order of decreasing expense. The three resulting waste streams are heat, water, and solids – in order of ease of disposal. Let’s calculate the effect of cutting 10 feet of steel plate one inch thick.

Suppose you are cutting with 50,000psi, a 0.014-inch water orifice, a garnet flow of 0.75lb per minute. With a relatively smooth surface finish, the cut will take 57.1 minutes at 2.71 inches per minute and use 42.2lb of garnet. The waterjet will consume about 25kWH of electricity and about 52 gallons of water. The jet will grind about a pound of the steel in the kerf of the cut into fine dust. So, what is the impact of all this?

The most expensive component is the garnet, and a major cost component in the garnet is transportation. An average transit distance for garnet by truck may be 1,000 miles. A truck loaded with 40,000lb of garnet may get 8 miles per gallon, so transporting the 42.2lb for 1,000 miles would burn about 0.13 gallons of diesel fuel. Generating 25kWH in a modern power plant would burn the equivalent of another 1.2 gallons. So, we could say that the carbon footprint on the consumption side from the 10-foot cut is about the same as for driving a moderately efficient car about 30 miles.

Of course, this statement is very dependent on the exact source of the electric power, but is roughly correct for coal- or oil-fired plants.

The 52 gallons of water consumed is about the same as would be used in 10 minutes of lawn watering and has little impact.

The heat produced is the most benign of the waste streams – in fact it is not even a waste if the jet cutting is conducted within a building that needs to be heated. The 25kWH ends up as heat and simply reduces the heating fuel consumption by about 0.5 gallons. On the other hand, if the jet cutting is performed in an air-conditioned shop, the extra heat load is a real waste because running the air conditioners requires extra power.

Water often is simply run down the drain without any treatment as it leaves the machine. In this state, it is cloudy with very fine particles in suspension. In some places, this is OK and in others, it isn’t. A first stage of treatment is to run the waste through a weir tank to clarify it.

Often this process alone is sufficient.

In other cases, a municipality may have a rule that no machine can run waste water into a drain. Alternatively, it may be that the fabricator is cutting some poisonous or hazardous material that contaminates the water. In this final case, a complete recycling system is used, and the water is filtered, deionised, cooled, and finally run back through the cutting nozzle.

The waterwaste stream therefore has little environmental impact, no matter how it is handled.

The solid waste from the cut described previously consists of 42lb of wet garnet with about one pound as powdered steel. Garnet in sufficiently large quantities can be recycled economically. One European company collects spent garnet and recycles it into jet cutting abrasive, sandpaper, and other garnet products. Heavy users also can buy garnet-recycling machines that reclaim up to 50% of the used garnet. Most US fabricators simply send the solid waste to a landfill where it is accepted as nonhazardous waste.

The effect of machine operating parameters The same things that affect costs also affect the environmental impact, but the effect is small for the cutting job. Table 1 compares material and energy consumption for a 0.01-inch jet size and garnet flow of 0.35lb per minute with the larger jet described above.

Table 1

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Jet diameter (inches)

0.014

0.010

Garnet (lb)

42.2

47.5

Energy (kWH)

25

27

Water (gallons)

52.2

63.5

Time (minutes)

57.13

136.7

green manufacturing The power level of the jet is reduced in half, but the energy consumed is slightly larger because the cut now takes more than twice as long.

The water and garnet consumption are also slightly larger, but the overall impact is not very sensitive to big changes in operating parameters. A far greater effect is found when examining alternate processes.

Other processes Perhaps the most energy-efficient way to make a 10-foot cut in a one-inch plate is with a bandsaw. A simple test was performed in which it took 27.7 seconds to cut through a one-inch bar, 1.5 inches thick, with a bandsaw that only had a one-horsepower motor. At this rate, a 10foot cut took about 37 minutes, but because of the low power used only about 0.5kWH. There is little other impact from this cut, but of course it is difficult to make intricately shaped precision parts with a bandsaw.

At the other extreme is wire EDM cutting, which is good for making precise, intricate parts. These are the parameters for a typical EDM setup for cutting 1-in.-thick steel quickly:

• • • • • •

Wire diameter: Linear speed: Wire consumption: Wire cost: Wire type: Electricity:

0.012 inches 0.25 inches per minute 1.04lb per hour US$5.98 per hour Hard brass (65% copper, 35% zinc) 10kWH

With these parameters, a 10-foot cut would take 480 minutes and consume about 80kWH. An environmental concern using this process is disposal of the water filters, which contain the residue from the copper-zinc alloy wire and the steel, and disposal of the deionisation resin. Most companies use a deionisation resin-regenerating service instead of disposing of it. The regeneration service must have an EPA hazardous waste generator licence.

Table 2 examines the three cutting methods for a 10-foot cut.

Table 2 - Cutting Process

Bandsaw

Abrasive jet

Wire EDM

Time (minutes)

37

57

480

Energy (kWH)

0.5

25

80

Effects None Waste garnet Wire and

deionisation residue The main environmental impact of abrasive jet cutting is energy usage. Cutting with an abrasive jet requires about 50 times the energy required for a saw cut of the same length, and one-third that of a wire EDM, but the environmental impact is small and about the same as driving a car for the same amount of time.

Dr John H Olsen is the Co-Founder and Vice-President, Operations of Omax Corporation. www.omax.com

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green manufacturing

Clean, green… and Australian-made When Australian company Granite Power needed a manufacturer to help develop its innovative new clean energy technology, it avoided the offshore route and turned to Archer Enterprises.

The Granex Heat Conversion System is a patented, world-first generator of clean energy developed by Granite Power. At the core of this innovation is a titanium and stainless steel impulse turbine, through which waste heat moves at more than Mach 1.7.

Even though Australia is not renowned for turbine technology, the decision was made to have it designed and manufactured onshore.

That task was given to the advanced manufacturing company Archer, based in Somersby, NSW. Granite Power’s Research Project Manager Sean McCracken says it was an ambitious project.

“For us to make it a commercial application we needed to find a way of reducing the cost,” explains McCracken. “Having Archer make the assembly was the most economical way. We found that it was more cost-effective to design and make the parts in Australia than do it overseas.”

The Granex Heat Conversion System is a modern evolution of the conventional Organic Rankin Cycle. The impulse turbine is connected to a diesel generator set (or, as in the case of its first working site at Newcastle, a solar panel array), where it captures waste heat which is usually vented straight into the atmosphere. The heat spins turbine blades at 70,000rpm generating clean energy. Internal pressure reaches 60 bar with operating temperatures of 200-260 degrees Celsius.

Archer was responsible for assisting with the design phase then converting initial CAD data into 3D parametric models before sourcing raw materials for internal moving parts and the outer casing. It was a challenging manufacturing job involving complex curves and multiple part thicknesses. The machining of the impeller took two hours on their Okuma multi-axis machine centre.

Archer decided to take the complexities to another level. Although it wasn’t part of the scope of works, they wanted to be able to simulate how internal parts would react to the extreme temperature changes.

Of utmost importance was preventing friction build-up or clash points.

Archer Operations Director Russell Byrne with Granite Power Granex Project Manager Sean McCracken.

So they machined multiple versions of parts that were fractions of a millimetre different in order to mimic the changes that the components would undergo inside the turbine.

“Archer’s mastery of design and process for this type of project was fantastic,” says Granite Power Chief Executive Officer Stephen de Belle. “They made us aware of certain issues and they were able to help us resolve them. The team are very enthusiastic about their work and it has been good to work with people who are proud of what they do.”

Archer co-director Brad Byrne found the Granex project very rewarding.

“We always like to take on a new challenge and to extend ourselves,” he says. “We are known for taking on the projects that others regard as ‘too hard’. Granite Power gave us an opportunity to produce failsafe parts that have to work non-stop in extreme operating conditions.

We are very proud to have contributed to their technology.” www.granitepwr.com www.archerenterprises.com.au

Clean thermal energy for clean fresh water RMIT research into a clean-energy water desalination and irrigation system has won a $132,000 grant from the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund.

Dr Abhijit Date was awarded the grant for his research into a sustainable, economical fresh water management system that could be used in coastal areas of India and salt-affected farming land in Australia. The system uses a special thermal water pump driven by low-temperature thermal energy rather than grid electricity, developed at RMIT and the University of Pune, India.

“There are many poor coastal communities in India where access to fresh water is an issue but they cannot afford to use standard powerhungry desalination and irrigation systems,” Dr Date said. “The system we are developing is both cheap to run and sustainable, producing no greenhouse emissions. It could also enable saline groundwater to be turned into fresh water for agricultural irrigation – helping farmers in Australia and across the world.”

The system runs on clean power sources such as solar thermal, geothermal or waste heat, and generates both fresh water and water pumping power using thermal energy at temperatures below 100C. Researchers have built a lab-scale prototype, with early tests showing the system can produce 1000 litres of fresh water from 2000 litres of saline feed water, with a salt concentration of 5000-15,000 grams per cubic metre.

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The system works by boiling a refrigerant at constant temperature and using the pressurised vapour to power a piston and pump water out. To suck water in, the vapour is cooled, reducing the volume, pushing the piston in the opposite direction. www.rmit.edu.au

green manufacturing

Solar energy powers innovation at Cook Medical Leading medical device manufacturer Cook Medical has taken a giant leap to reducing its carbon footprint and power bill by installing a 706-square-metre field of solar panels on its roof.

The installation is the largest of its kind in Asia Pacific, utilising advanced solar panel technology called PERC (passivated emitter rear contact). According to Barry Thomas, Cook Medical Vice-President and Managing Director of Cook Medical Australia, the panels were a significant investment, but are expected to pay for themselves within 15 years.

“We have a roof and lots of sun, so harnessing solar power was an obvious solution to reduce costs for us and the environment,” said Thomas. “Using alternative energy to power manufacturing still isn’t mainstream, but given the benefits it’s completely logical.

We’ve chosen extremely efficient technology and the panels are now offsetting on average 30% of the power we use each day.”

The installation of the panels was finished in January and carried out by local company Positronic Solar, who recommended and installed the custom-design. John Inglis, Director of Positronic Solar was impressed by Cook Medical’s commitment to alternative energy: “When we put in our proposal we were very honest about what was achievable and the best technology for Cook Medical’s solar panels,” said Inglis. “They appreciated our straightforward approach, and chose an effective solution to offset a significant majority of their power use.

“The design utilises Schneider-Electric inverters and WINAICO highefficiency PERC 280W monocrystalline modules – some of the most advanced technology available. The panels are not only efficient even in low light, but also perform very well at high temperatures – which is of course very important here in Queensland.”

Cook Medical Australia was established in 1979 and has grown to a headcount of over 500 people at its headquarters in Eight Mile Plains. www.cookmedical.com

Orora targets 15% energy savings Orora has announced an ambitious three-year plan to achieve energy-savings of up to 15% at its manufacturing operations in New Zealand.

Orora manufactures packaging for a large number of New Zealand’s consumer food and beverage brands. The initiative, developed with the support of the NZ Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), will target annual energy savings of 11.8GWh – the equivalent annual energy use of about 1130 households.

“We have already invested heavily in energy efficiency improvements in our Australian operations,” says Orora Managing Director and CEO Nigel Garrard. “Benchmarking our New Zealand operations against these have shown that there is potential to make significant energy savings in New Zealand too.”

Garrard says energy efficiency is a fundamental part of running a sustainable business. The initiative is expected to reduce the New Zealand arm of the company’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by 1600 tonnes, comparable to the annual emissions of about 580 cars.

“At Orora, we challenge ourselves to do things differently and seek out innovation, sustainability and energy efficiency is an example of that approach,” says Garrard. “Our recent experience implementing energy efficiency programs in Australia has demonstrated that in addition to saving on energy costs, other benefits such as increasing output, improving working environments and greater engagement with staff can also be realised.”

Orora will invest approximately $2m towards optimising energy used for compressed air, warehouse lighting, and motorised systems, as well as reducing energy used in process and space heating.

EECA Chief Executive Mike Underhill says a group-wide energy management agreement can help organisations to establish a comprehensive energy management plan that makes energy work harder and smarter for their business.

“Orora will be one of a growing number of New Zealand large companies signed up to group-wide energy management agreement

with EECA, and are achieving excellent savings across their operations,” says Underhill. “Many of these savings are easy to achieve, but you have to go after them in a structured way.

Businesses are often surprised at opportunities to save money and improve operations that have been sitting under their noses.”

Orora has committed to an investment program to support energy efficiency projects that will run over the next three years. Its energy efficiency team is conducting energy audits of each New Zealand manufacturing plant to identify energy saving opportunities, both operational and technical. With over 700 employees spread across six sites across the North and South Islands, the company will introduce a training program to improve energy efficiency procedures and awareness amongst staff. The outcomes of the initiative are also expected to provide a more productive working environment for its staff.

Garrard says taking an innovative approach to better energy management will unlock potential improvements in output and productivity.

“We know that our customers are looking for suppliers that take sustainability seriously. Improving our energy efficiency is a key area where we can make an impact. This is part of our commitment to being a customer-led packaging company.” www.ororagroup.com

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green manufacturing

FAST treatment for wastewater Environmentally concerned companies throughout Australia are taking up an easily portable solution to wastewater treatment that can be built into standard shipping containers, supplied by CST Wastewater Solutions, based in Roseville, NSW. The modular Smith and Loveless FAST Process – the latest example of which is currently being installed in outback Queensland – can be easily transported, installed and operated with minimal engineering and maintenance at worksite and population centres. It is basically a plug and play system. The patented Fixed Activated Sludge Treatment (FAST) process is available in individual unit capacities of hundreds of cubic metres a day, which can be multiplied by the use of interconnected multiple units at mining and energy sites , oil and gas facilities and other remote facilities.

In addition to achieving higher loading rates within a smaller footprint, effluent produced can be recycled into suitable industrial, public facility and commercial processes. It can be mixed with resource site runoff water, for example, and sprayed on haul roads for dust suppression.

FAST achieves nutrient removal for applications containing high levels of nitrogen, a water pollutant that has increased significantly in industrial, commercial and municipal applications. Nitrogen is a particular environmental concern to resources, engineering, construction, hospitality, marine, agribusiness and public facility and water and waste water infrastructure organisations.

The FAST process involves a fixed-film, aerobic treatment system designed for tackling variable load and flow conditions.

FAST consists of tankage packed with completely submerged media, which creates a high surface area-to-volume ratio, which, combined with internal settling zones, maintains constant bacterial growth during low-flow and peak usage periods typical of many remote installations. This results in stable operation on a daily basis.

“Proven in thousands of installations worldwide, the system has been shown to be highly reliable in Australia because its stable process withstands hydraulic shock loads and prevents bacterial washouts, says CST’s Managing Director Mike Bambridge. “Simple operation and maintenance means no daily operator requirements and very little annual plant maintenance.”

CST’s installations of the FAST system have been proven in Australian applications including: Alcoa, BHP-Billiton, Bechtel Pacific, Blair Athol Coal, Blue Circle Southern Cement, Cadia Gold, Dampier Salt and Wakefield Colliery. Further installations have been completed for the Central Coast Grammar School, CSIRO, Hunter District Water Kiama Municipal Council, Lakeside Leisure Park and Berowra Waters Marina.

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Built into standard 20- or 40-foot shipping containers or concrete or fibreglass units as required, each FAST unit arrives at the job site as complete, factory-built units or as large components for easy field assembly. FAST can also be retrofitted into existing aeration tankage to boost capacity or performance without expanding the plant.

CST’s major current FAST project, scheduled to be completed this year, involves combination units with total capacities from 100 to more than 300 cubic metres a day.

The FAST system features and benefits include: • Modular design and construction.

• Low sludge production.

• No moving parts, except for an air blower that provides oxygen while circulating the liquid.

• Low maintenance, with no daily operator requirements and very little annual plant maintenance.

• Robust and reliable performance.

The fixed media through which the wastewater circulates provides a high surface area-to-volume ratio, protecting against hydraulic shock loads.

The FAST system – and the complementary Smith and Loveless Titan MBR systems – are packaged aerobic wastewater plants that form part of a broad range of proprietary wastewater treatment equipment from

CST. Manufactured to ISO9001 and EEC standards of safety and design, the range includes: water and wastewater screening; grit removal and dewatering; septic receival stations; dissolved air flotation; sedimentation systems and clarifiers; shaftless conveyors; sludge dewatering; lime handling; and silo systems; continuous sand filters; micro-filters and screens; solar-powered circulation; UV disinfection; ozone treatment; and anaerobic treatment.

CST has been providing a broad range of industrial and municipal water and wastewater solutions for 25 years. Its expertise includes designing, supplying and installing wastewater treatment plants for major applications in a wide range of industries. The company is a leading supplier of innovative wastewater treatment solutions throughout Australia and New Zealand, with projects also completed in Europe, Asia, Africa and America.

CST is a member of the Global Water and Energy Alliance, a group of companies around the world committed to providing solutions in waste and wastewater treatment for the recovery of green energy and water.

The company also provides expert assistance with equipment and system selection, design, installation and maintenance, as well as operation of wastewater treatment systems and delivery of complete packaged plants. www.cstwastewater.com

green manufacturing

Making the most of hydraulic fluids How many litres of dirty used hydraulic fluid does your company send to landfill each year? How much do collection and disposal cost? What if, with no detrimental effect on your equipment and machinery, you could reduce that amount to zero?

This is now a reality thanks to an Australian innovation developed by a company in Sydney celebrating its 25th anniversary in the hydraulics industry. Kevin McCaffrey is the founder of Excel Hydraulics and pioneer of FluidCare Technology, and his message is: “Don’t throw away your hydraulic fluids! Keep using them!”

McCaffrey’s new filtration technology has already been used on heavy machinery, plant equipment and hydraulic compactors in the manufacturing, rail, mining, crane and refuse collection industries, as well as on naval vessels. It is helping customers save tens of thousands of dollars.

“It’s a myth that fresh hydraulic fluid is clean,” says McCaffrey.

“International testing proves that drums and containers are not free of sub-micron contaminants. It’s also a myth that new filters remove all contaminants from fluid.

“When you drain fluid there is always a quantity left behind clinging to parts, hoses and in the reservoir tank. The solution is to examine every millilitre of fluid for particulates and then successfully remove them. It is possible now to make used fluid contaminant-free and to reuse it over and over again.”

At the heart of Fluid Care Technology is a FLUID-X Diagnostic, which is like an x-ray exposing contaminants down to the size of bacteria (0.004mm). FLUID-X provides a scientific reading of the fluid with direct reference to the type of equipment and the nature of its environment. This includes cleanliness, viscosity, physical properties and temperatures. Highly accurate analysis reports are produced, including the best solution to keep the fluid as pure as possible.

Excel Fluid Care Technology goes on-site and does not interrupt equipment operation. Vehicles and equipment can continue to function whilst the contamination identification and filtration process is carried out. A mobile rig-based centrifuge removes the bulk of solid contaminants and suspended water plus a vacuum dehydrator removes emulsified water and gases. Portable units are available to permanently attach to equipment for continuous filtration. McCaffrey is so sure of his technology, he is standing behind its effectiveness with a Zero Down-Time Guarantee.

“By implementing an ongoing maintenance program we are helping companies maximise their up-time and dramatically reduce the volume of fluids going to landfill. Should equipment fail due to reasons under our control we will cover the cost of bringing it back online.” www.fluidcare.com.au

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Innovation Through Passion AMT April 2015

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green manufacturing

Baleen Filters – All-Australian innovation It seems that the phrase ‘Australian Made’ is becoming more and more rare as time goes on. The same goes for ‘Researched in Australia’ or ‘Designed in Australia’ or ‘Commercialised in Australia’. When a product can lay claim to all of those titles, it’s worth giving it a second look. By Jack Baldwin.

The Baleen Filter is a self-cleaning industrial water filter that can clear and separate solid waste down to a size of 20 microns.

The inventor of the Baleen Filter, Yuri Obst, holds a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering and Bachelor of Science. His invention was picked up in 1999 by the University of South Australia’s commercialisation arm, called Techsearch at the time (now iTek).

“We built the prototype and had quite a bit of interest in it at the time,” Obst explains. “It was working in by-products industries, dried fruits in the Mildura-Sunraysia region.”

The filter works much like its namesake, the filter-feeder system inside the mouths of baleen whales. Essentially, the dirtied water flows over a filter cloth. The user decides the fineness of the filter, and it can be switched in and out at will. At 20 microns, nearly all visible matter is removed from the water.

The filter employs two high-pressure spray arms to mimic the self-cleaning ability of a whale and its baleen, which uses the water flowing into its mouth to dislodge unwanted particles. The first spray arm moves across the bottom of the filter cloth, separating clumped material from the filter, and the second sweeps from above shortly after, clearing it from the filter and collecting it as a separate by-product.

“Our idea was working prior to the startup phase, but it really needed additional funding,” continues Obst. “It was in an area where we could have got funding through the networks of the University, but it wasn’t enough to gain entry to more than one market. We needed to find further funding to say, okay, this product is not only destined for fruit and vegetable agriculture, but meat by-products, mining and other industries.”

Obst created the Baleen Filters start-up company with four professors of engineering coming on board as major shareholders, as well as the University of South Australia. So started the path to commercialisation.

“It found the technology gaining a foothold in several agricultural regions, starting in Sunraysia, the Riverland, Riverina, Warrnambool,” he explains. “It was a real dynamic test bed, not only getting the idea to a product stage and development, but a complete commercial product.”

After a five-year development phase, the university stepped out and Baleen was standing on its own feet in 2004 as a viable business. It’s been experiencing 20% growth per annum for 15 years running.

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The original plan was to keep production in-house, but as demand grew, the company has outsourced work to manufacturers in South Australia and Victoria.

Meeting rising demand “The team I work with is made up of engineers,” Obst says. “Because of that, every idea, every concept that we’ve modelled, they’re always built. We built the first seven at the University.”

The plan was to keep the entirety of production in-house, but as demand started to ramp up, the small team was getting bogged down with manufacturing every piece themselves.

“So, we used local manufacturers to accommodate our needs. Progressively, as Baleen Filters evolved, we used very select outsourcing partners,” he adds. “Today we use as many as 12 companies for various elements of the product, then we bring it all in-house, we assemble it, road test it and send it out to site. It’s Australian made, and out of the 12 players, there’s probably nine which are South Australian and three which are Victorian.”

The key to Baleen’s growth has been demonstrating the filter in the real world.

With the permission of companies who have already installed the filter, Obst and his team show potential clients the filter in action. The Baleen filter system quickly shows its worth.

It doesn’t take up much space, whether it’s installed upstream or downstream. It doesn’t require a greenfields-type installation like a clarification or settling pond, and doesn’t produce unwanted odours.

“What we do is take the dirty water stream and turn it in to a refined solid product, and also a water stream that’s of high quality,” says Obst. “That’s the stand out case for Baleen – in an application you can apply the filter to, we have a return on investment proposition which a lot of our competitors just don’t have.”

The by-products produced by the Baleen end up earning their money back in a relatively short time.

“With clarification, you might have a tank or pond large enough to let the water settle, so by the time it comes out, most of the must is at the bottom. In the case of the Baleen, rather than leaving sludge on the bottom, it shears the water out of the solids.”

That sludge or muck is often of a spadeable consistency. Obst compares the final product to what you might find if you filtered dirty water through a woman’s stocking. “It’s a fairly straightforward product. It takes out anything of a solid nature, or anything thicker than water. It’s not just chunks, it’s fines, it’s paint, anything distinctly different to water.”

For meat-processing, it collects fat – not unlike what you’d find congealed in a frypan. It’s the natural product in its wet phase, which can be collected and reused in something like fertiliser. At the same time, it stops any problems that solids can cause downstream.

green manufacturing Baleen filtering shears the water out of the solids, leaving sludge that is often of spadeable consistency.

are now four Baleen units, from small to very large, each with a range of configurations depending on the application.

“The fourth, larger size is modular,” says Obst. “Our largest customers just repeat on our larger ones. We got familiar with trading requirements when we started to export, so that’s the largest one we were able to do and we went modular from there.”

Even the small units can handle large flows – up to 15 litres of water a second. The largest can handle hundreds of litres per second, obviously scaling even higher with its modular design.

The water recovered can also be invaluable.

In one case study of a truck-washing station, the soiled water that had run off from the operation was collected, filtered, and able to be used over and over.

“The equation to get business has been maturing over the course of time. At first we were focused on how it takes material out of water so it didn’t cause a downstream problem, or the client was using so much water that they wanted to recycle and reuse it,” Obst says. “And those are really good and dramatic reasons to put the Baleen in.

In the early stage we’d target those repeat businesses, like the fruit and vegetable processing plants. I won’t say we got all of those clients, but the lion’s share of them.

“We conduct on-site trials and demonstrations, using it as an education point,” Obst says. “We bring in not only likeminded customers, but also potential agents and representatives. That’s what we’ve done in each location overseas.

Obst and Baleen still retains some ties to the University as well. Their employee base is typically four, but it can stretch depending on their workload. He leverages a casual base made up of TAFE students and university undergraduates.

“The mainstream industries, the mature ones, might not use as much water or they’ve adopted processes that meet their requirements. We target the evolving, growing industries. They’re the ones faced with the idea that they constantly have to do better and improve their processes.”

“Our present view is that we’re going to certainly be manufacturing in Australia for some time to come,” concludes Obst.

“We’re hoping that we’ll get to a sufficient stage of growth where we can consolidate our manufacturing suppliers from might be 12 down to three or four, or even one or two.”

As the size of the company’s customers have grown, so have the units themselves. There

www.baleenfilters.com

“To get into other markets though, it’s all about establishing that comprehensive return on investment calculator.”

Baleen Filters was just awarded the 2014 Australian Water Technology Industry Company of the Year Award by growth and partnership company Frost & Sullivan. They’ll be assisting Obst and his team to create some white papers and case studies, feeding the information in to an ROI calculator for possible clients.

Export focus Now, the company is increasingly chasing an international market. Baleen is sold in eight countries, using a similar model as it does here in Australia.

“I’d say 95% of our business is outside of South Australia. We’ve been hovering around the point where our export sales will exceed our national sales. We’re still at around 50:50 at this stage, but with the weakened Australian dollar, we’re expecting exports to run away.”

When Baleen finds an opportunity overseas, for a certain industry or application, they search the immediate area for other possibly applications and industries.

A comparison of water quality before and after two-stage inline Baleen micro-screening.

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One on one

John O’Brien is the Managing Director of Australian CleanTech, and the organiser of the annual Australian Technologies Competition. He spoke to William Poole.

AMT: Firstly, tell us about this year’s Australian Technologies Competition.

AMT: The competition aside, what is Australian CleanTech and what are its main areas of activity?

John O’Brien: Certainly. We’re into the fifth year of the Competition, and the aim is that we find, mentor and celebrate the best emerging technology companies from around Australia. There are two benefits: growing emerging technology businesses, but also finding solutions for industry to help them be more efficient and competitive. This year we’ve got the categories of Food & Agritech, Energy Technologies, Advanced Manufacturing, Mining Tech and the Built Environment. We’ve also got prizes for Global Development, for solutions for the developing world, and one for the best region in Australia that supports technology.

JO’B: We’re a research and consulting business. We work for growing technology companies, and for investors looking to invest into Australia. And we do a lot of work for governments at local, state and national level. We’ve also done some work for the Korean and Chinese governments. We run networking events around the country and publish a couple of stock market indices.

In terms of the Advanced Manufacturing category, the focus is “How do we help the manufacturing industry become more efficient and more competitive?” One previous winner was BluGlass, a Sydney company which designed a new way of manufacturing light emitting diode (LED) cells that uses less energy, operates at lower temperature, is cheaper and delivers better-quality LED cells.

They’re commercialising that right now. And last year’s winner was Rheology Solutions, whose technology allowed real-time online measurement of the consistency of liquid manufacturing processes, which is very good for things like shampoos, where the texture of the liquid is very important. Their technology allows manufacturers to have better quality control and less wastage.

One project we did a couple of years ago was with the Vic government, where we worked with a lot of SME manufacturers…

AMTIL-type members… smart guys doing smart manufacturing.

And we educated them on what the trends were and where the opportunities existed. More importantly, we introduced them to Victorian-based clean-tech companies who needed a manufacturer. A lot of those guys were exposed to the auto industry so were looking for different clients, and there was real value to the emerging technology companies to work with an experienced manufacturer on things like design-for-manufacture and Lean manufacturing and supply chain thinking. Often an emerging tech company just doesn’t have that depth of experience, so there were real benefits on both sides. A lot of companies out there would never call themselves clean-tech and probably never will, but will be making stuff that might be called clean-tech.

AMT: Is there a strong focus on Australian content?

JO’B: Absolutely. The entry requirements of the competition are that you have to be an Australian company, you have to be an SME with less than 100 employees, and you have to own or have beneficial use of the IP used in your technology. So it’s not about distributors of international technology, it’s technology that is effectively owned in Australia by that company.

AMT: What do people stand to win?

JO’B: Well, sometimes award programs have a big fat cheque at the end, but not this one. We believe we offer something far more valuable – and the companies that have been through it believe this as well. So last year we had 220-odd entries, 36 of them became semi-finalists, and each of them went through the Business Accelerator program, which gave them a whole lot of mentoring, a whole lot of connections, and a whole lot of advice from industry about their technologies and how best to get to market. And also exposure to Chinese,Korean and Singaporean partners, who came to Australia to meet them. The winners also get financial benefits if they come on a trade mission at the end of the year.

But it’s more about connections with partners, customers and investors, and the exposure of being judged the best in Australia.

To be honest, it is really a mentoring program in disguise. There are finalists, there are winners, but it’s actually more about how we help those 36 companies and make all of them into successes.

With the mentoring, when we have three days in Sydney with all of those 36 together, there are really two games. One is the game of the competition and how you can do well in that, but the far more important game is how we help you be successful in your business. Regardless of whether you win the competition, if you have a successful business, we’ve done our job.

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It’s all vaguely around environmental technologies, but technologies that have economic benefits as well. Environmental benefits are just a nice side-effect to developing good technologies that make sense and make their investors money.

AMT: What’s your professional background and how did you end up working in this field?

JO’B: I started off as an engineer, I worked on oilrigs and designed buildings and managed a gas network for a while. I was at Origin Energy for nine years, and the last six of those I was doing activities not dissimilar to now – I was doing M&A and strategy and investment-type stuff. I got sick of having a boss, so I thought I’d give it a go on my own. That was back in 2007, and we’re still in business, so that’s good.

AMT: Renewable energy and other clean technologies are often cited as growth areas for manufacturers. Where do the big opportunities lie over the next five to ten years?

JO’B: Well some of these technologies, particularly renewable energy, often get stuck in the politics of the world, which is unfortunate but that’s the way it is. But with a lot of the stuff we do the politics is to some extent irrelevant because of global trends: the politicians will catch up eventually.

So in terms of big areas of growth, renewable energy is growing incredibly fast. To date Australia hasn’t done a great deal of manufacturing in that space; they’ve done a lot of importing. But it was good to see IXL pick up a big contract to make frames for solar panels on the big AGL project.

Other growth areas from a market point of view are things like green-building technologies, either for new buildings or retro-fit.

That’s a very quick-growing market. Energy and water efficiency devices: as energy and water become more expensive, people are actively looking for products that make sense. And energy storage

is a very interesting area, with a lot of very big global companies spending a lot of money. Whether there’s a local manufacturing angle to that, I think there is, I think you can buy battery modules and package them up locally for the local market. Energy storage in the next three or four years is just going to go through the roof, in the same way solar panels have in the last few years.

Electric vehicles have been a long time coming, but they are coming, and there will be a lot of recharging stations. There’s a handful of companies around Australia looking to manufacture recharging stations: Tritium in Brisbane is one. So again, there might be a manufacturing opportunity there as well.

AMT: The carbon price and its subsequent repeal have highlighted the political difficulties in tackling environmental issues. What would you like to see in policy terms to promote clean-tech?

JO’B: Australian politics is really quite strange. I travel a lot in Asia and people just go “What is going on in Australia? The whole world is moving in one direction and you seem to be moving in another.”

Again, it is what it is. The politicians seem to have got a bit stuck at the moment.

But from a policy perspective, it can focus too much on technologies being ‘environmental’. In my mind, almost any new technology should be more efficient, use less resources – that’s almost the definition of technology. I would suggest there’s an environmental benefit to any successful technology; it’s really about finding the best technologies, creating jobs and driving investment and trade. Don’t call it ‘clean-tech’ if that causes problems, don’t call it ‘environmental’. It’s just backing good technology that drives efficiency and enables new companies to grow and older industries to become more efficient.

green companies. One Australian company we’ve worked with is currently negotiating a joint venture to establish operations at an industrial park outside of Shanghai and will secure a $3m cheque from the government when it is signed. There’s plenty of risks of course, but plenty of potential.

Korea sees itself as a global high-end manufacturing leader, and is very keen to find the best technologies and access global markets and global supply chains. There’s an interesting route there for Australian companies, to partner with Korean companies. And then there’s Singapore, where the government sees clean-tech as an opportunity for economic development. There’s going to be massive demand through South-East Asia, and they’re providing grants and assistance to help companies relocate there to access that market.

AMT: What advice would you give to Australian manufacturers looking to break into this space?

JO’B: I think there’s a perception that it’s all a bit green and weird and doesn’t have a real market. But I think once manufacturers start understanding what the opportunities are, it’s just: “Well that’s just what we do anyway. We manufacture stuff that is smart and efficient and more productive.”

It’s a huge growing market globally. It’s actually growing pretty quickly in Australia, despite the politics. And these are the technologies of the future. So if your only customers are old industries, you need to start thinking about how you can start manufacturing for these new industries, and get some of that growth for yourself. www.austechcomp.com www.auscleantech.com.au

There’s some reasonable policy support for that in general. I see some specific things that could be done that could help this sector a little bit more. One of those is that a lot of technologies we see, especially through the competition, are born global – they may never have a customer in Australia. BluGlass, for instance: there’s no LED manufacturing in Australia, so all their customers will be international. There’s quite a few of those type of companies around that actually end up going into international markets earlier in their lifecycle than traditional industries. A traditional exporter – whether it’s a manufacturer or a sheep-producer or a winemaker – will grow to a reasonable size and then think about going into international markets, whereas a lot of high-tech companies go very early in the piece. Some specific policies and assistance around that would help them achieve growth earlier.

AMT: Looking overseas, which countries are really taking the lead in terms of clean technology, and what can we learn from them?

JO’B: There’s plenty going in the US and Europe. In our region, which is where we concentrate, we work in three countries: China, South Korea and Singapore.

China has a massive desire for the best technologies in the world to fix up their environment. Their environment is a disaster – they’ve done 200 years of industrialisation in 20 years, and 200 years’ worth of pollution. They now need to fix it up, anything from the Beijing smog, to polluted rivers and polluted land. There’s massive demand, massive government support, and massive investor support for the best technologies to help with environmental problems. There are incredibly generous tax regimes for AMT April 2015

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Cutting Tools

Recipe adjustments – How machinability analysis fine-tunes metal-cutting Productive machining is never “a piece of cake”. One key reason is that machining is quite unlike baking, where all-purpose flour works well in a wide range of recipes. In contrast, manufacturers know well that there is no all-purpose workpiece material for machined products. By Patrick de Vos. Different product applications require workpiece materials with widely differing performance properties. Automotive axels, for example, need the toughness of low-alloy steels. Turbine engine components require the heat resistance of nickel-based alloys. As reflected in their specific performance capabilities, all workpiece materials exhibit different levels of five basic physical properties. Those properties are abrasiveness, hardness, and thermal conductivity as well as tendencies toward adhesion/ductility and strain hardening.

The proportions of the individual properties in an individual workpiece material largely determine its machinability. A relatively soft low-alloy steel will exhibit strong tendencies to adhesion that can lead to edge build-up on a tool and diffusion wear, while the poor thermal conductivity of a tough nickel-based alloy can result in extreme cutting temperatures that will cause a tool to deform and fail.

The role of material properties In theory, knowledge of a workpiece’s specified mix of alloying elements can be used to determine the choice of cutting tools and cutting conditions that will produce predictable wear patterns and good productivity. But the reality is often different. Not infrequently, the cutting tool and machining parameters indicated for a certain workpiece material do not produce entirely satisfactory results.

Variability in workpiece material composition is the reason. As in any manufactured product, a range of tolerance exists for the elements of a workpiece material’s makeup.

Carbon content or analysis of hardness distribution provides data on abrasiveness. Measuring chip elongation at the chips’ breaking point enables quantitative measurement of adhesion tendencies, and a formula relating the material’s tensile and yield strength to the yield strength of a reference material produces a measure of strain hardening.

The property data-points are charted on a five-pointed grid or pentagram. Low values appear near the centre of the pentagram, and high values towards its borders. The area enclosed by the data-points provides a graphic image of the sum of the material´s tendencies.

Connecting the five single property data-point results produces a fivesided polygon within the borders of the pentagram grid.

Separate from picturing a specific workpiece material’s blend of properties, the system provides guidelines for each of the five basic properties alone in terms of suggested cutting material, geometry, and cutting conditions. The system also describes typical tool wear patterns.

For example, material adhesion tendencies create a need for tough tool substrates with tough coatings, sharp edge radii and high rake angles, and cutting conditions biased toward temperature control (usually speeds high enough to carry heat away in the ductile chip).

Tool wear patterns include micro-chipping, built-up edge, flaking, and notch wear.

To confirm this phenomenon, Seco examined a series of pieces of raw stock, all of them nominally the same workpiece material, and measured the five properties before machining. Some of the properties were equal among the pieces of stock, but others showed large differences.

When the basic properties differ between workpieces, the cutting tool will behave differently and productivity may decline. To establish a method to recognise such variations and provide guidance regarding ways to improve tool performance, in the early 2000s Seco joined a project with steel suppliers and other metalworking-related companies aimed at creating a system to measure workpiece properties and use that data to predict machinability independent from applications such as turning, milling and drilling.

A machinability analysis system The resulting machinability analysis system is based on quantitative measurements of the five material properties listed earlier. Hardness and thermal conductivity are measured via standard methods.

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On the other hand, tools aimed at handling material hardness should have hard or tough substrates (depending on the feed rates employed), cutting edges featuring small rake angles, and be applied at low feed rates and depths of cut. Typical tool wear includes plastic deformation, chipping, and breakage.

Cutting Tools

Machining materials that tend to strain harden require tools with toughness and small nose radius and well adapted cutting edge geometries, applied at low cutting speeds and high feed rates and depths of cut. Prominent tool failure modes include plastic deformation, chipping and notching.

Process adjustments When initial machining results are not as expected, this integrated approach is useful because it enables tools and cutting parameters to be adjusted to modify the results. For example, if a material is expected to show high adhesion tendencies, it is assumed that the chips will be long. However, if chips are longer or shorter than expected, it is a sign that the adhesion tendencies are either greater or less than first thought.

Viewing the pentagram, or even simply knowing the indicators of the performance influences of other properties, can help a machinist adjust tool features and cutting parameters to the actual properties of the workpiece. It is very much like adjusting the elements of a cake recipe when the first baking operation does not meet expectations.

Materials such as superalloys that exhibit poor thermal conductivity mandate the use of tools with high compressive strength, high rake angles and strong cutting edges. Low cutting speeds and feeds are typical, and tools may fail via plastic deformation or simply a high rate of wear.

Workpiece material classifications based on material composition and structure such as those established by ANSI in the USA and ISO in Europe are useful. But they are only starting points for the development of machining processes because properties may vary within the same classification as well as among separate pieces of stock.

For example, stainless steel is defined as a steel alloy that is at least 12% chromium. However, there are stainless steels with higher percentages chromium as well, and production variations can further alter the mix. Even though they are all stainless steels, when the different compositions are machined cutting behaviour is different because the compositions and structures are not the same.

Because the pentagram system does not simply classify workpiece materials, it is a source of practical tips or guidelines that enable machinists to understand what they see in terms of expected and actual tool performance. The system does not describe the workpiece material as bad or good, but illustrates how differing combinations of properties can change the interaction between the workpiece and the cutting edge. The key is to find the combination of tool properties that best fits the workpiece material properties.

Finally, tools intended to handling abrasive workpieces, should, unsurprisingly, be engineered with abrasion-resistant substrates and strong cutting edges. Low feed rates and cutting speeds but high depths of cut are appropriate. Wear mechanisms include flank and crater wear and notching.

Conclusion The goal of machining is to produce parts and make money. A key influence on the machining process is the material properties of the part. Therefore, directly or indirectly, the end cost is influenced by the workpiece materials. Better understanding of workpiece material properties leads to fewer problems and greater productivity in the machining process and therefore cost-efficient and profitable manufacturing results.

When the system is applied to a specific workpiece material, it represents a blend of the material’s properties that emphasises their interrelated effects.

Patrick de Vos, Corporate Technical Education Manager, Seco Tools www.secotools.com/au

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Cutting Tools

Iscar – The hole truth The global machining industry requires ever faster, more accurate and longer-lasting hole-cutting tools that deliver higher-quality control standards. To meet this demand, Iscar has launched several advanced new products to slash hole-making times, reduce users’ costs and improve product quality.

Iscar has expanded its popular SumoCham drilling head line with the introduction of a range of drilling heads that feature a groundbreaking new geometry. A product of Iscar’s innovative R&D department, the advanced new drilling heads feature unique, concave cutting edges, which allow gradual entry into material. This measured penetration reduces torque and cutting forces, significantly enhances the drills’ self-centring capability and results in improved hole circularity, straightness, concentricity and surface finish.

In addition, tighter dimensional tolerances are able to be achieved.

Available in diameters from 8mm to 25.9mm, rising in 0.1mm increments, the new HCPIQ drilling heads enable the use of long drills of up to 12xD, without the need for drilling a pilot hole, and are ideal for drilling precise holes prior to reaming operations. The longlasting HCP drilling heads are made from the superior IC908 TiAlN PVD nano-layer coating grade, providing extended tool life, including superior peeling resistance and slow, stable wear progression. Also, by eliminating pilothole operations, the cost-effective new drilling heads slash machining cycle times and only half the number of tools will be required for a given drilling operation. Designed for the efficient machining of the ISO P and ISO K materials groups, SumoCham ICP/K2M features a secondary rear margin that gives an efficient wiping effect that provides improved performances wherever high standards of surface finish and cylindricity are required. The double margin provides extremely stable drilling and is recommended for use on interrupted cut and slant hole exit situations.

Iscar’s ICP/K-2M provides improved hole cylindricity of up to 0.05mm and enhanced surface finish of up to 1.6 microns Ra. The ICP/K-2M range also represents an ideal solution for high-quality, accurate pre-holecutting, prior to reaming operations.

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Reaming – The final process The reaming operation is often the final process in a machining cycle. Tool failure at this stage will damage the part and in most cases scrape it. Therefore the use of the most reliable reaming tool is essential.

Iscar offers a comprehensive range of reaming solutions, including unique tools for holefinishing applications that provide increased productivity and enhanced product quality.

Iscar reaming systems are designed to provide solutions for the most common hole tolerances (IT5 and up). To help customers select the most appropriate reaming tool

for each particular application, Iscar has experienced reaming specialists on hand.

The quality of a hole drilled in metal may not be accurate enough and may not have the required surface finish quality for a specific application. Drilling followed by reaming usually produces a hole quality and surface finish that is as close to theoretical perfection as possible. Iscar’s high-quality reamers are able to achieve a mean roughness of Ra 0.05 microns or greater, depending on the workpiece material. Roundness is the tolerance zone that is limited in the measuring plane, perpendicular to the axis by two concentric circles. Iscar reamers are

Cutting Tools able to achieve roundness of one micron and greater, depending on the workpiece material and machine condition. Cylindricity is the tolerance zone that is limited by two coaxial cylinders. Iscar reamers can achieve the cylindricity of two microns and greater, depending on the workpiece material and machine condition.

system, the robust Bayo T Ream is suitable for IT6 and greater reaming applications. The advanced arrangement features a frontal indexing system which means there is no need to disassemble the tool, ensuring fast set-up times. In addition, as the system has no unnecessary clamping spare parts, components cannot be lost when indexing.

The Bayo T Ream system

High cutting feeds and speeds and extended tool life are achieved with the help of Bayo T Ream’s advanced PVD coating and the

Featuring a solid carbide head, a flexible steel shank and a unique, secure clamping

tool’s ability to direct coolant, including oil, emulsion and MQL to each cutting edge. The Bayo T Ream system’s single shank can be used to accommodate a wide range of hole diameters, various types of cutting edges and different grades, whilst an ingenious pocket design is able to take an unlimited number of replacements. The precision manufacturing is supported by the advanced system’s maximum run-out specification of three microns. www.iscar.com.au

CASE STUDY: Part: Hydraulic piston pump cylinder Material: DIN C45E (carbon steel SAE 1045)

Drilling the pilot hole Cylinder block reaming

Holder

Reaming the bushing (brass/copper assembly)

DCN 240-072-032A-3D RM-BNT8-5D-20C RM-BNT7-5D-20C

Insert ICP 240-2M IC908 RM-BN8-24.300-H7SA-908 RM-BN8-19.150-H7SA- RN01 Diameter (mm)

24

24.3H7

19.15H7

Tolerance

75

H7 (0/+0.021 mm)

H7 (0/+0.021 mm)

Reaming depth (mm)

9

75

75

No. of holes/part

150

9

9

Cutting speed

0.50

150

170

Feed (mm/rev)

995

1.0

0.8

Table feed (mm/min)

40.7

1965

2260

Reaming time per part (sec)

1170

20.7

18

Tool life (no. of holes)

229

1200

2700

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Cutting Tools

A beam to cut sharp edges Tools with cutting edges made from polycrystalline diamond (PCD) are well established for the machining of non-ferrous metals. One challenge is achieving the balance between tool life and cutting edge quality.

The more diamond there is directly on the cutting edge, the longer the cutting edge will last. A coarser grade of PCD means more diamond on the cutting edge. However, the cutting edge will then have a greater number of microscopically small, sharp projections. Walter has now embarked on the use of a new cutting technology, in which a laser evaporates the protruding diamond grains.

Due to its hardness, PCD is used for two groups of materials. For one group the use of carbide tools is no longer economical and for the other group PCD is the only sensible option for cutting. In addition to non-ferrous metals, particularly aluminium, these materials include polymers, carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (CFRP), composite materials, titanium alloys, ceramics and carbides.

More than two-thirds of Walter’s customers for PCD applications originate from the automotive industry. This sector uses large quantities of aluminium for gearbox housing and cylinder heads for examples. A further 20% of its customers are companies involved in the aviation industry. One of the focuses in this sector is currently lightweight construction using composite materials.

“With its PCD range, Walter offers all these users an optimal combination of cutting performance and service life,” emphasises Alexander Krause, Manager of the PCD Business Line at Walter.

Tool life versus cutting edge quality Special solutions developed for individual customers account for 98% of the PCD tools that Walter makes. They comprise a basic body to which the individual PCD elements are brazed with a level of precision of just a few tenths of a millimetre. However, this process does not allow the individual plates to be positioned with sufficient precision to keep within the required tolerances of a few micrometres.

Two further machining steps are therefore necessary. First, wire erosion is used to cut the contour into the cutting edge of the blank.

Then, once the PCD cutting edge has been prepared by this method, it is ground to achieve the sharpness and precision expected of the finished tool.

There is one important factor that prevents this type of machining from providing optimal results: PCD grades differ in terms of their grain size.

The larger the PCD grains in the cobalt used as a binder, the more diamond there will be on the cutting edge. And the more diamond there is on the cutting edge, the longer the service life.

There is one inherent problem with the current process: instead of cutting through the grain directly on the edge, the erosion wire cuts around this grain. This results in microscopically small, sharp projections, which have a detrimental effect on the surface quality of the machined workpieces.

During the grinding process, the protruding grains are ground level with the cutting edge. A smoother cutting edge with fewer sharp protrusions is produced. However, even when the diamond is being ground, grains can break out of the binder matrix, resulting in a degree of jaggedness remaining on the surface.

A cutting edge beam The tool specialists at Walter embarked on a search for a solution to this problem, which culminated in the discovery of the merits of using laser technology for this purpose.

“Laser cutting has been around for quite a while for what we call chip breakers,” explains Krause. “But it wasn’t until about two years ago that laser technology was advanced enough to be able to economically cut the cutting edge too.”

Compared to the combination of erosion and grinding, laser cutting has one key advantage: the beam cuts through diamond grains, producing a precise cutting edge without sharp projections even when the cutting edge comprises a high percentage of diamond.

“The material that is to be cut absorbs thermal energy in the localised area on which the pulsed laser is focussed,” says Krause. “The protruding grain is evaporated with the utmost precision, leaving the surrounded areas unaffected by the heat. This was a problem with existing solutions, which we have now managed to overcome with state-of-the-art laser technology combined with our many years of experience.”

The laser during the cutting process.

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Cutting Tools

The Walter PCD profile mill, with optimised geometry for reduced cutting forces and minimal vibration tendency.

A cutting edge with lasered chip breaker.

Lasers and the production process

When Walter customers receive their PCD special tools, they do so in the knowledge that these tools now feature a significantly longer service life, coupled with a cleaner cutting edge. The sharper cutting edge reduces the forces required for cutting, which in turn affords multiple benefits: deformations in thin-walled workpieces that occur during cutting as a result of excessive cutting forces are no longer a concern; vibration is minimised; and the relatively stable clamping of the workpiece is no longer quite so crucial.

Erosion and grinding still have their place in the production of PCD tools, but the benefits of the new laser cutting process are plain to see, not just in terms of the results it produces, but also during the production process. Both the cutting edge and the chip breakers can be cut into the diamond without having to clamp the workpiece in more than one position – until now, this has involved a second process. Inaccuracies resulting from the need to clamp the workpiece in a different position are now a thing of the past, as are grinding operations, which are costly due to the fact that they must be largely performed manually.

“The machine is fully automated, which means that we no longer need to carry out any grinding, added to which we also achieve improved surface quality,” says Hanischdörfer. “This is a benefit that has come about as a result of our investment in the latest production technology, and it is one that we are keen to pass on to our customers.”

At the same time, customers will see an improvement in the surface quality of the cut workpiece. For visible high-gloss surfaces in particular, such as cases for high-end mobile phones, this plays a key role.

It all comes down to the fact that what matters to users most with any kind of technological progress is that it will make their processes more productive. So how is this benefit passed on to the customer?

“Our projection-free lasered cutting edges offer obvious benefits here,” says Roland Hanischdörfer, Product Manager in the PCD Business Line at Walter.

“It is passed on directly,” explains Hanischdörfer. “PCD tools are complex to use. Direct contact with the customer is crucial. When customers receive their new tool, our engineers are there too. They set cutting data, optimise cutting processes and analyse problems.

Without the help and guidance of our engineers, customers would not be able to translate the benefits of new technologies such as laser cutting into a productivity increase.

Laser cutting has allowed Walter not only to make huge advances in cutting edge quality, but also to expand its product range. Thanks to the new technology, Walter is able to manufacture special tools that were previously either simply not feasible or were not economical to produce due to the position or the geometry of the PCD cutting edges.

Even bell tools with cutting edges on the inside and a holder body that is closed around the circumference can be produced this way.

“As far as we are concerned, service is part and parcel of the product itself – and an important one at that.” www.walter-tools.com

Rotary burrs enhance Dormer Pramet program Dormer Pramet has added a range of carbide rotary burrs to enhance its support tools program for general machining processes.

It is the first time that burrs will be available under the Dormer product brand, with a comprehensive assortment of designs and shapes to choose from, including ball nosed cylinder, pointed tree, oval, flame, 60-degree and 90-degree countersinks, cones and inverted cones varieties. The introduction of the burrs is part of a wider product launch by Dormer Pramet on 1 April – the first combined unveiling since Dormer and Pramet merged last year.

Dormer’s wide selection of burrs provides numerous options to machine a range of materials, including hardened steel, non-ferrous materials and plastics. Its combination of carbide head and steel shank (above 6mm) provides an ideal mix of rigidity and strength.

This feature reduces vibrations, resulting in a consistent and secure performance, as well as an improved tool life.

A double cut design on Dormer’s burrs improves ease of control, increases metal removal rate and breaks swarf into manageable pieces. Also, the ball end geometry incorporates skip flute grinding, which improves cutting action closer to the centre, reducing the chance of swarf congestion and increases strength. Alternatively,

the aluminium cut option makes it the first choice for non-ferrous materials and plastics. The high helix and rake angle offers large flute volume for rapid material removal rates.

Dormer’s burrs are available with TiAlN coating to increase tool life in difficult conditions and help to resist ‘built-up edge,’ which is common for cutting tools with small flute volumes. www.dormerpramet.com

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company focus

Micron Manufacturing co-founders Edward McMillan (left) and Ryan McClenaghan.

Micron Manufacturing – A new cut above While some manufacturers were looking for a quick exit strategy directly out of the manufacturing industry three years ago, one New South Wales manufacturer saw the downturn as a chance to make its mark. By Nina Hendy.

Micron Manufacturing began trading in July 2012, and has since found itself a niche where many other manufacturers fear to tread.

The newcomer, based in Sydney, has intentionally side-stepped traditional manufacturing techniques, instead opting to implement new technology and a fresh approach to manufacturing. And already, it’s reaping the rewards, recently making BRW’s Fast Starters 2014 top 100 list. In an age where consumers expect instant results, this Generation-Y start-up is able to deliver, turning around custom jobs for clients in an exceptionally short timeframe. The design company’s strength is in its ability to go from paper to product in just 24 hours, according to director Ryan McClenaghan.

“We’ve taken the down time out of the manufacturing on the shop floor through technology and software and processes,” says McClenaghan.

“We’ve also invested in design-for-manufacture software that feeds automated blanking, lowering both design and blanking labour costs while speeding up delivery of the first finished part.

“Traditional manufacturing techniques would look at a job, program it and manufacture in a certain way, all of which takes longer than it does for us.”

McClenaghan and his business partner, Engineering Manager and Director Edward McMillan, previously both worked for Japanese machinery company Amada. That experience gave the duo the confidence to invest heavily in cutting-edge technology for their company, much of which is sourced from Amada.

Micron Manufacturing uses the latest virtual prototyping simulation software (VPSS) technology – a 3D CAD virtual prototype simulation system. This technology works to bring ideas to life, developing detailed working 3D renderings of projects for verification before the manufacturing process even begins. In doing so, it eliminates the need for prototypes and produces highly accurate print-to-part processing, the first time around.

“Everything that’s been manufactured in our factory has been proven out in the office before it actually gets released to the factory floor, which lowers costs as well as increasing speeds,” says McMillan.

That software, combined with high-speed, high-quality laser cutting using an Amada laser-cutting system, and bending achieved with an Amada HDS hybrid-drive system press brake, plus Pulse Mig and Tig Welding, enables the company to achieve quality results quickly. Most importantly, it also allows the company to keep its costs down.

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Faced with an inability to compete with China on large volumes of work, many manufacturers often put high-mix, low-volume work such as prototyping in the too-hard basket. It’s difficult work, takes a long time to perfect, and can be expensive for the customer.

Traditionally in Australia, many companies have home-crafted prototyping and then ventured offshore to get their product manufactured. Micron Manufacturing saw the gap in the market for prototyping in the short run. The trick, according to McMillan, was to make it profitable.

“We were able to do that by investing in the technology that we have,” McMillan explains. “So instead of having to take the whole day to prototype something out, we might – like we did today – complete four different prototype jobs that were verified on the computer, and then we actually manufactured and test them out the same day.

“We’re talking to our customer, getting that feedback, coming back, making that prototype, and putting it in their hands straight away,” McMillan adds. “That’s the power that we have.”

While Micron Manufacturing has the capacity to do large runs of production, it concedes it will never be able to match the price of some of its overseas competitors. And it’s not something the company dwells on. McMillan believes that Micron Manufacturing has found its calling.

“We focus on getting that speed to market type work, doing the short production run,” he says.

company focus

Lessons from Japan Early on, Micron Manufacturing looked to Japan’s manufacturing sector for inspiration. It’s a sector that has struggled to compete for work with China for more than two decades. McClenaghan says Japan took note of the Asian superpower and adapted its work, finding its foothold in moving to a high-mix, low-volume environment.

It’s a lesson that has paid dividends for Micron Manufacturing.

“They’ve implemented a system in there and we’ve looked and studied that and we’ve implemented that over here,” says McClenaghan.

McClenaghan and McMillan are both aged 31. In an industry where the company’s competitors are mostly aged between 45 and 60, the average age of Micron Manufacturing’s employee talent stands at 26.5. The advantage of growing up with technology has equipped McClenaghan and McMillan with the drive to embed innovation that extends beyond the manufacturing floor and into every aspect of their venture.

With its focus on design and R&D, delivering in manufacturing, lasercutting, bending and fabrication, Micron Manufacturing turns around between 20 and 50 different jobs a week for Australian customers.

The company uses tools to monitor its production and to zero in on its target market to improve its profits, as McClenaghan explains.

“We use tools in order to monitor our production, our manufacturing, so we can bring up real time data at any time and we can see our inefficiencies… We can focus on bottlenecks on the shop floor,” he says. “Or I can look at production and I can look at jobs and job costing through that analysis and I can target market my customers due to the profitability in the jobs. Cutting the down time out of the factory by utilising the tools and the information and the analysis that you can give back to a daily, day-to-day or weekly manufacture is what we study a lot.”

McClenaghan says that he has little time for the doom and gloom media reports and industry chatter overshadowing Australia’s manufacturing sector.

“It’s about this closing down and so many redundancies here and this and that,” he says. “It’s like people are giving up in Australia within this sector of the GDP. That’s my feeling as a young person.”

In the aftermath of the GFC and the emergence of China’s strong manufacturing sector, built on its large, low-wage workforce, this fledgling company has gone from strength to strength. McClenaghan pinpoints much of the company’s success to its ability to implement change, something he fears some other traditional manufacturers are reluctant to embrace. McClenaghan believes change is integral to surviving in manufacturing. He says the company thrives on change – deliberately altering its direction every three or six months in order to keep pace with the evolving needs of clients and the transformation of manufacturing.

“So the world has changed and we need to react, change and do things very quickly,” he says. “I think us being of that younger age and growing up in that era a little bit gives us a bit more freedom to change easily and fast.”

It’s a mantra that’s definitely working. While many Australian manufacturers have been forced to lay off staff in recent years, Micron Manufacturing has maintained jobs. With its innovative manufacturing techniques, the company has been able to keep its costs low and has even come very close to matching the Chinese in the price of some of its work.

“Our customers are on-selling to that market through our design for them,” McClenaghan adds.

As the company’s success continues to exceed expectations, Micron Manufacturing is determined to continue treading along the same path. While the company will work on getting the right people, such as project managers, in place as it prepares for its next growth phase, there’s little else it will tinker with.

Based on its early success, Micron Manufacturing will carry on investing heavily in leading-edge technology to ensure it’s maintaining the edge on its competition. It knows it’s already setting the pace in its corner of the manufacturing sector.

“I think we’re ahead of our competition at this particular stage of the game,” McClenaghan says.

While others may be bracing for a bleak 2015, Micron Manufacturing is looking towards a bright future. McClenaghan is confident that his company will only continue to flourish.

“The amount of scope for us as a manufacturer, it will be strong,” he says. “With the way this financial year is going, we’ll probably have another growth on what we did last year and I can imagine the same again the next year.” www.micronmanufacturing.com.au

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Recruitment & Training

What’s all this productivity stuff anyway?

We often hear about the need to increase the productivity levels of Australian workers. But just what exactly does enhancing productivity actually entail? By Roger La Salle.

In general, productivity is a measure of the efficiency with which a task is undertaken. Traditionally, this term applied to the so-called “muscle workers”, as Karl Marx referred to them – those who physically toil to produce an outcome. This could apply to manufacturing, mining, or agriculture and the like.

In the last few years we have seen governments of all persuasions talking about improving productivity within the Australian workforce, including the public service, but just what does this mean? How is it measured? And, in any case, is it the “main game”?

Look at the big picture There are several ways to look at this, but in simplistic terms, productivity increases do not lead to business development or expansion, except somewhat by accident as lower-priced products may win more market share for a company at the expense of a competitor in the same sector. Or better still, by design, if any increased profit inspires investment in innovation.

But to be frank, when speaking of productivity improvement, no amount will allow us to compete with Asian or Indian manufacturers that pay a fraction of the costs and overheads industry in Australia has to bear. In fact a recent graph by Boston Consulting Group now ranked Australian manufacturing wages as the most expensive in the world, with Indonesia among the lowest followed by India and then Thailand.

Full employment may be a casualty!

Moreover, in theory, if one likes to extrapolate productive improvement to infinity, what this creates is unemployment, as labour is removed to achieve the same outcome to serve the same market. Of course such an extrapolation is extreme, but in microcosm this is actually happening in many industries as automation to improve productivity replaces muscle workers.

Just look at garbage collections today, achieved in a fraction of the time with less effort and half the staff of yesteryear. Furthermore, as wages rise and business overheads increase, the drive to replace labour is even stronger. And now low interest rates are also fanning the flames of headcount reduction, courtesy of automation.

Presently Lean practitioners and consultants are doing well – very well indeed – as they drive to improve businesses – or better said, profit outcomes. In a recent conversation with one such consultant, I proffered the suggestion that Lean in effect may create unemployment. Yes, of course the consultant responded, that’s how we sell it. Implement Lean and you can get the same outcome with fewer people. To be fair, you can’t argue with that logic, but to suggest that Lean will allow us to compete on a price basis is pure folly.

What is most needed is product growth In short, what we need in this country is new products, services (ones that actually generate wealth, like inbound tourism) and innovation protected either by appropriate intellectual property regulations (IPR).

Alternatively, we need a constant drive to replace the old with the new, before the competition can react. In other words, we must innovate endlessly. This is the strategy of many successful enterprises, with the cellphone companies probably leading the race when it comes to delivering ever-better products sooner.

Productivity improvement might have a nice political ring and without doubt will increase profits, but this alone is not the answer. Indeed a famous statement says it all: “You can’t cost-cut your way to prosperity.”

In reality, if you look at a company’s profit & loss statement the facts are obvious. Revenue minus costs equals profit. So if we improve productivity, costs go down and profits go up. This is great for the boss and maybe the Government that collects more taxes. But it does not expand the top line of business; it does not boost revenue.

To do this, new markets and new protected or innovated products are needed.

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Roger La Salle is the former CEO of the Innovation Centre of Victoria (INNOVIC) as well as a number of companies both in Australian and overseas. An international speaker on innovation, opportunity and business development, he is the creator of ‘Matrix Thinking’, a technique now used in more than 26 countries and licensed to Deloitte, one of the world’s largest consulting firms. www.matrixthinking.com

Your total HR Solutions

Welding

Trends in robotic welding guns Robotic MIG guns may seem like a small part of the whole automated system, but the evolution of their design and functionality is having a significant impact on the cost, productivity and quality of an application. By Ryan Lizotte.

Solid mounts

Metal fabrication environments are dynamic, ever changing with the economy, customer demands, available labour and skill sets, and competitive forces, among other factors. To maintain a favourable position in the industry, it is critical for fabricators to continually look for ways to increase efficiencies while also improving quality and decreasing costs. For many, that means a shift toward welding automation, which has experienced its own changes in the last ten years.

During this time, robotic welding manufacturers have transitioned away from the manufacture of conventional robotic welding systems to the development of through-arm styles, in which the power cable of the robotic MIG gun runs through the arm of the robot as opposed to over top of it. These are now the prevalent robot styles in the industry and this change has had a direct impact on the design of the robotic MIG guns for the marketplace. But it is not the only trend associated with robotic MIG guns. Like any component of the welding operation, this equipment has continued to evolve to the demands of the industry and to provide solutions to improve the business of welding.

Through-arm benefits Improving and simplifying cable management has been the driving force behind the shift toward through-arm robots, and therefore the development of through-arm robotic MIG guns to accompany them. With conventional style robots and guns, the cable is prone to “whipping” during air movements, which causes undue stress on this portion of the gun, and can lead to premature wear and failure caused by the cable rubbing against the robot or tooling. It also creates additional cost and time for companies to implement cable management systems.

The through-arm style robot and through-arm robotic MIG gun make it easier for companies to minimise downtime associated with cable management and reduce costs for cable replacement. It also eliminates the risk of selecting the wrong cable length, a common mistake that occurs with conventional robotic MIG guns. The through-arm robot model dictates the length of the robotic MIG gun cable, so there is no concern about it being too long (which requires extra cable management or could cause wire feeding issues) or being too short (which can cause the cable to stretch and fail prematurely) — both issues associated with conventional robotic MIG guns.

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There are other benefits to the shift to througharm robots and through-arm robotic MIG guns, namely that they can accommodate for increases in welding speed that are also becoming customary in the industry.

Robots are getting much faster, but with the through-arm robot there is no longer the concern of the robotic MIG gun cable getting caught on tooling during quick movements.

Moreover, it is easier to complete offline robot programming or welding simulation and have it work with these robots because there is less concern about having to accommodate for clearance for the power cable in an application. If a robotic MIG gun fitted for a through-arm robot works in simulation, it will most likely work in the real-world application.

Cable durability, simplified replacement As fabricators strive for greater arc-on time and higher productivity, robotic MIG gun manufacturers are helping by providing increasingly more durable power cables on this equipment and implementing features that simplify cable changeover.

Some manufacturers offer a rotating power connection on the front of the cable that allows the robot to spin on its final axis as much as necessary without binding the cable.

This feature helps to minimise stress due to routine torsion and to extend the life of this part of the gun, as well as to increase the robot’s operating range by allowing it to rotate a full 720 degrees (360 degrees in both directions) and weld faster. Built-in quick-change features on many robotic MIG guns also expedite cable replacement, adding to the operation’s productivity, while the use of stronger cable materials help better resist wear and UV damage from the arc for longer component life.

Another trend associated with robotic MIG guns is the use of solid mounts (also called solid arm mounts) as opposed to the clutch mounts that were used previously to protect the gun in the event of a collision — an occurrence commonly caused by an incorrectly position work piece or tooling that has been left out of position, among other factors. This trend is due to more sophisticated collision detection software being built into today’s robots. This software is increasingly capable of monitoring current rates and/or torque so it can quickly stop the robot when an impact occurs.

Solid mounts are made from durable, highstrength aluminium alloys, and are an alternative to the clutches used with older robot models.

There are two key benefits to using a solid mount for robotic MIG guns compared to a clutch: firstly, they offer greater repeatability for higher weld quality; and second, they are less expensive. Clutches (also called shock sensors) are designed to recognise the physical impact of the robotic MIG gun on a solid surface during a collision and send an electrical signal back to the robot controller, causing the system to stop. While effective, clutches are designed to move, which can affect tool centre point (TCP) after a collision. Also, since it is an electrical device, it costs more than a solid mount and is more prone to failure because of its internal components — expenses that many companies can now happily omit.

Welding

More space, better joint access As fabricators seek ways to become more competitive and produce higher volumes of parts, they need to maximise floor space to make room for more robots to do the job.

As a result, robots and welding cells are becoming smaller and in many instances, tooling has become more complex. These changes pose greater space constraints when it comes to the robotic MIG gun.

Many robotic MIG gun manufacturers have responded to this trend by creating guns that provide a more open work envelope around the mounting arm (the depth from the wrist of the robot to the tip of the robotic MIG gun) so manoeuvring

around tooling and gaining joint access becomes less cumbersome. There are also more options for neck lengths and angles available for robotic MIG guns, which helps companies gain access to complicated joints.

Increased cooling options Because many robotic welding applications tend toward higher amperages and longer arc-on times, it is critical for companies to have a robotic MIG gun that provides adequate amperage without overheating.

However, the complexity and increased cost of water-cooled robotic MIG gun systems (compared to air-cooled models) make some companies wary of the investment for their high-amperage applications. In addition, if there is an issue with the coolant flow, there is the risk of the robotic MIG gun overheating and failing — an event that can be costly not just for replacement of the gun, but also potentially for rework of the part should quality problems occur.

A development in recent years that addresses this concern is a hybrid robotic MIG gun. This type of gun has a durable neck like an air-cooled model and water lines that run external to the neck down to the nozzle.

Should the coolant flow fail, the gun can rely on the underlying air-cooled uni-cable to provide enough current-carrying capacity for the job for a period of time, saving downtime and costs to address a complete robotic MIG gun failure. These guns also offer the higher amperage associated with a standard watercooled gun, making them a good option for companies who need greater cooling capacity for an application.

Adding extras Because time is at a premium when it comes to robotic welding, companies are always looking for ways to extend their robotic welding cycle time — down to the second. To help maintain greater arc-on time while still protecting the robotic MIG gun and consumables from spatter build-up that could affect weld quality, adding air blast to robotic MIG guns is becoming a popular choice with some companies.

This optional feature can be added to the robotic MIG

The through-arm style robot and through-arm robotic MIG gun make it easier to minimise downtime associated with cable management and reduce costs for cable replacement by dictating the length of the robotic MIG gun cable and accommodating increases in welding speed.

gun and functions by blowing compressed air through the gun at a high pressure (approximately 100psi) to clear debris loose in the front end while the robot is moving out of the way so the table/fixture can index.

This addition can help companies reduce the number of times that the robotic MIG gun needs to be reamed out by a reamer or nozzle cleaning station, resulting in more arcon time and greater productivity.

More to come While robotic MIG guns may seem like a small part of the whole automated system, their design and functionality can have a significant impact on the cost, productivity and quality of an application. The trends discussed here are just some of the ways that robotic MIG gun manufacturers have adjusted the designs and capacity of the products to help companies gain the best results in recent years.

As with any piece of welding equipment, robotic MIG guns will need to continue evolving just like any equipment in order to meet companies’ changing needs and to meet the demands of the fabrication and manufacturing industry.

Reprinted courtesy of Fabricating & Metalworking magazine. Ryan Lizotte is a field technical support specialist for Tregaskiss. www.tregaskiss.com

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Welding

Kemppi Australia launches Arc System 3 Welding equipment supplier Kemppi Australia last month launched its Arc System 3 welding management system, at an event in Melbourne.

Designed to improve welding quality management and operational productivity while reducing operating cost and risk, Arc System 3 was launched in the presence of representatives from over 30 major companies. Kemppi CEO Anssi Rantasalo explained that the Arc System 3 is a modular suite of software-based solutions.

“Users can implement the various modules according to their needs to effectively monitor, control and manage the quality and efficiency of their welding operations while capturing relevant documentation,” said Rantasalo. “The system traces every weld, records welder qualifications, welding procedure specifications (WPS), all materials and operational welding parameters. Once welding parameters are set, any deviations by the welder are identified in real time and can be altered to eliminate the need for rework.”

Arc System 3 can be applied to single- or multi-machine operations, as well as to multi-site operations both within a country and across borders, managed from a single central welding co-ordination point.

To emphasise the Arc 3’s capability, Rantasalo announced during the launch that Kemppi is implementing its first multi-site commissioning of the system across international borders. Together with Kemppi, Peikko Group, a leading global manufacturer and supplier of concrete connections and structures, will deploy Arc System 3 at its production units in Finland, Lithuania and Slovakia.

“The precise welding information that the Arc System 3 software will provide Peikko from its production plants in these three countries will have a positive effect on the overall efficiency of the company’s production, profitability and costs,” said Rantasalo.

David Green, Kemppi Australia’s Managing Director, also revealed that the first Victorian implementation of Arc System 3 was underway.

“We are delighted to announce that the Arc System 3 is currently being implemented by Shadbolt Engineering,” said Green. “Shadbolt designs, fabricates, assembles and installs metal structures on behalf of a broad client base. Welding is a critical component of its day-today activities and the Arc 3 System will help ensure the company’s

ongoing quality of welding work, build productivity and simplify the capture of welding data.”

Attendees from project management, manufacturing, offshore fabrication, oil and gas, and the construction and mining sectors were given an impressive demonstration of the Arc System 3 in action.

During the demonstration, Green explained how the system’s ability to automatically collect and analyse big data information delivers significant benefits for the user.

“You know at a glance how the welding operation is proceeding and if any adjustments need to be made, saving time and money,” he said. “Plus, it can collate welding documentation automatically to significantly reduce the time and cost associated with post-welding administration. In essence, Arc System 3 is an invaluable toolbox of solutions that support welding operations to become significantly more efficient and productive, save time and money, and minimise risk.”

The modular nature of System 3 means it can be tailored to each organisation’s specific requirements. The system’s flexibility ensures that features such as NDT, welder maintenance and power source calibration/validation scheduling can be built in as required. It also fully supports the operation of a formal welding quality management system, as required under local welding standard AS/SNZ1554.1:2014, and specifically the quality management requirements set out in AS/NZS ISO 3834-2, as recommended particularly for structural fabricators requiring third-party approval under the AS1554.1 standard.

“Up to now, welding processes in critical operations have relied upon the integrity of the welder plus retrospective welding inspection to guarantee welding quality,” remarked Green. “The Arc System 3 revolutionises all this. It factually confirms that all welds are as they should be, and delivers complete peace of mind. As we’ve said it lets you ‘stop guessing and start knowing’.” www.kemppi.com

Accupocket – battery-powered MMA welding, now with VRD AccuPocket, the world’s first portable off-grid battery-powered MMA welding unit from Fronius, is now available from Australian distributors SMENCO with Voltage Reduction Device (VRD).

Powered by high-performing lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, AccuPocket weighs just 11kg giving users unprecedented freedom of movement in manual electrode and TIG welding. AccuPocket is an ideal solution for repair welding or site-erection work in remote terrain where there is no direct access to mains electricity.

A fully charged battery (400Wh) delivers sufficient power to weld up to eight 3.25mm-diameter electrodes or 18 electrodes of 2.5mm diameter. The ActiveCharger device is specially tailored to the requirements of the welding unit, based on Fronius’s proven Active Inverter Technology. An intelligent control system using AccuBoost Technology ensures the battery and the welding electronics work together perfectly. This results in better results than with a comparable mains-only powered MMA welding unit. Exceeding stringent Australian safety standards, AccuPocket with VRD has an Open Circuit Voltage (OCD) of 12V – three times lower than the 35V maximum OCD standard required.

Thanks to its facility for battery-powered operation, AccuPocket minimises time-consuming weld preparation work. In many

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applications, it is actually more economical over its service life than conventional electrode welding systems. www.smenco.com.au

Robotics & Automation

Four decades of robotics in Australian manufacturing It has been 40 years since the first industrial robot found its way onto the factory floors of industrial Australia. Introduced as a specialist technology to automotive production lines, robots are now being used in a number of creative ways by Australian businesses of all sizes. By Shermine Gotfredsen, Business Development Manager, Universal Robots Asia Pacific.

The first industrial robots were brought in to help local car manufacturers replicate the same production line approach that had long been a staple in global industrial hubs such as Detroit. These machines were responsible for building many of Australia’s iconic cars and their potential was soon seen by other large-scale manufacturers.

At times, use of robotic technology has delivered some decidedly mixed results: a push for robotic sheep shearing in the 1980s brought little more than some blank looks from farmers and worried glances from sheep. However, the local industry has grown up considerably since then.

Australian robotic purchases are now at record highs. According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), robot sales have reached record levels in Asia/Australia with almost 100,000 new robots deployed across the region in 2013 – up 18% cent from a year earlier. The rush to automate has seen companies such as Universal Robots have to increase its distribution and sales network in Australia.

Interest from traditionally strong robotic markets such as automotive and food manufacturing have now been supplemented by interest from a broader range of smaller businesses that are looking to lessen the burden of repetitive tasks and drive productivity levels.

For these growing businesses, the cost of labour associated with these tasks can be crippling, with machine operators in small Australian factories spending the majority of their working week tending to machines. However, by increasing the level of automation, businesses are finding that they can now focus on more important tasks such as new product development, marketing or redirecting manpower to other manufacturing processes.

Importantly, their drive for higher levels of automation is helping shape the future direction of robotic design. For example, the shared

workspace of smaller businesses has meant safety is now a key consideration in the design of next generation industrial robotics, with SMEs demanding a solution that creates an environment where workers and robots are able to function productively side-byside in close quarters.

Another factor is ease of use – allowing for shop floor operators to quickly program and operate machines themselves. Today, programming has been simplified using a graphic user interface that features a drag-and-drop function similar to that found on an iPad.

During the coming years the increasing variety of businesses turning to robotics will push the need for modularity and machine flexibility.

Unlike the big, heavy, fixed function forbearers that were originally brought into Australia, today’s user now requires movement of 360 degrees rotation on all axes in both directions. This allows them to be useful in a wider range of applications in many different industries.

For companies such as Universal Robots, this increased range of movement and simplified function means constantly exploring new technologies such as more resilient gear and servo functions to enable increased reliability and performance.

Smaller businesses also require a more portable solution. Being lightweight, robots can now be mounted on the wall or shifted from one location to another, adding flexibility to the manufacturing process and thereby saving money on valuable real estate costs.

This is a significant advantage for businesses when they choose to expand, move or grow their production line. Also, small-batch and seasonal productions are no longer stumbling blocks to businesses if the robots can be relocated with ease without the need to overhaul the floor layout.

The increasing demand for automation will continue to drive robotic innovation to meet the needs of this new and growing potential customer base in Australia. The local industry is constantly looking for new ways to improve its products, and input from these new Australian customers will be critical in influencing future worldwide robotic design.

The proliferation of compact industrial robots is an exciting indication of the times ahead. From measurable payback periods to improved flexibility, greater consistency, higher job satisfaction levels and enhanced cost savings, it is evident that smaller businesses can invest in robotics and stay ahead of the game. This demonstrable benefit and close collaboration with manufacturers will mean the next four decades of industrial robotics in Australia will be an even more exciting time for the industry. www.universal-robots.com

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Robotics & Automation

NASA installs giant composite material research robot It looks like something out of a ‘Transformers’ movie – a huge robotic arm that moves and spins to pick up massive heads filled with spools of carbon-fibres, then manoeuvres through a sequence of preprogrammed patterns to deposit those fibres onto a bed 12 metres long. But instead of transforming from machine to Autobot, it can transform epoxy and fibres into aerospace structures and parts.

NASA’s Langley Research Center began the process of setting up the advanced composite research capability that engineers are calling ISAAC (Integrated Structural Assembly of Advanced Composites) back in November. Just to get ISAAC to the Hampton, Virginia facility was a challenge financially and physically.

“We have worked for two years to obtain this precise robotic technology. But we proposed the idea more than six years ago,” said structural mechanics engineer Chauncey Wu. “It will really make a difference in our ability to understand composite materials and processes for use in aviation and space vehicles.”

A huge crane from a local company barely had clearance to lift the ISAAC robot arm and set it down on the ground until technicians could install it on its 12m-long track.

Funding was one stumbling block, but Wu and his ISAAC project teammates Brian Stewart and Robert Martin were able to convince NASA Langley to provide about US$1.4m, the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate to kick in US$1.1m, and the Space Technology Mission Directorate and NASA Langley’s Space Technology and Exploration Directorate to contribute a combined US$200,000 to the multi-million dollar system cost.

The other challenge was the actual physical move of the ISAAC system. The system is only one of three in the world manufactured

by Electroimpact, headquartered in Mukilteo, Washington state. The other two are used for the bulk manufacturing of composites, not for research as NASA intends.

Two 16m-long covered flatbed trucks made the trek all the way across the mainland USA to bring the robot to NASA Langley in Hampton, Virginia. The trucks arrived at the crack of dawn, before most employees had arrived, because they were so large. Waiting for them was ISAAC’s new home – a big empty space in NASA Langley’s Advanced Manufacturing and Flight Test Articles Development Laboratory.

The robot is known for its precision work, but the choreography to place it inside the building had to be just as exact.

“We had to bring in a massive crane from a local company to lift ISAAC,” said Stewart. “There were only inches of clearance between the crane and the ceiling as they moved the robot arm and set it on the floor.”

A few weeks later the same crane returned to set the arm onto the track that it will use to lay down composite fibres. Technicians from Electroimpact still have a number of weeks to make sure all the electronics and pieces work so that ISAAC can begin doing the research that Langley engineers have been waiting to do. Researchers plan to have ISAAC up and running in early 2015 with the first research customer - the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s Advanced Composites Project (ACP).

Two trucks carried the multi-million dollar robot system across country from Washington state to Hampton, Virginia.

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Robotics & Automation Right: The crane returned two weeks later so the 6m-tall robot arm could be placed on the track. The robot head will make large composite pieces by sliding up and down the track laying down epoxy and carbon fibres in precise patterns.

The ACP is a public-private partnership that is geared toward reducing the amount of time and money it takes to bring new, advanced composites from test tube to vehicles. The goal of the project is to reduce the time for development, verification, and regulatory acceptance of new composite materials and design methods. NASA will meet this objective through the development and use of high fidelity and rigorous computational methods, new test protocols, and new inspection techniques.

NASA’s space projects also plan to use the ISAAC system in their research. The second project planned for the robot is the Composites for Exploration Upper Stage (C-EUS) Project, a partnership between the Space Technology Mission Directorate and Human Exploration Mission Directorate that is led by the Marshall Space Flight Center.

The C-EUS Project is a three-year effort to design, build, test and address flight certification of a large composite shell suitable for the second stage of the Space Launch System. Langley’s role in the C-EUS Project will be to lead the design, manufacture and testing of the shell’s structural joints, as well as leading the overall structural and thermal analyses. www.nasa.gov

Inspired by nature: The BionicKangaroo What can we learn from nature, and how can these insights be transferred to automation technology?

Festo has unveiled the BionicKangaroo – a project developed by its Bionic Learning Network.

As a global supplier of pneumatic and electrical automation technology, Festo’s core competence lies in shaping the production and working worlds of the future and offering its customers innovative solutions for the production systems of tomorrow. One of the latest projects is the BionicKangaroo, which addresses various aspects of future production, such as resource efficiency and energy recuperation, functional integration and human-machine interaction.

A development team from Festo’s Bionic Learning Network spent two years recreating the jumping behaviour of the natural kangaroo as closely as possible, and then learning from it. The BionicKangaroo now demonstrates exactly what distinguishes the natural kangaroo, namely recovering and storing energy and retrieving it on the next jump.

The Achilles tendon assumes an important function here, which is why it is particularly pronounced on the natural kangaroo. The function of the natural Achilles tendon is carried out with the help of an elastic band made of rubber. It is fastened at the back of the foot and parallel to a pneumatic cylinder on the knee joint. The artificial tendon cushions the jump, simultaneously absorbs the kinetic energy and releases it for the next jump.

Stable, dynamic jumping behaviour The BionicKangaroo’s condition monitoring systems as well as precise control technology ensure the required stability when jumping and landing. The kangaroo achieves its high jumping power with the aid of pneumatics. In the places where the highest positioning accuracy is called for, electric motors are used – for example, when it comes to controlling the tail and hip. In this way Festo uses the artificial kangaroo to show how pneumatic and electric drive technology can be combined by means of a new control generation developed by Festo to make a highly dynamic system.

Festo paid particular attention to the mobile energy supply on the artificial kangaroo. For this purpose, the team even developed two

different concepts – one with an integrated compressor, and one with a mobile high-pressure storage device. The movement apparatus (kinematics) is made out of laser-sintered parts reinforced with carbon.

As a result, the artificial animal weighs just 7kg with a height of around 1m, and it can jump up to 40cm high and up to a distance of 80cm.

The BionicKangaroo can be controlled with gestures by means of a special armband, which registers the muscular activity of the operator.

A positional sensor in the armband measures the arm’s movement; the armband transmits these signals via Bluetooth to the compact control unit of the artificial kangaroo, which then enters into interaction with the operator. www.festo.com

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Robotics & Automation

Job survival in the age of robots and intelligent machines In Australia, there are reports that up to half a million existing jobs could be taken over by robotics or machines run by artificial intelligence. With smarter computers taking on more of the work that people currently do, what jobs might be left for us humans? By David Tuffley Almost any job that can be described as a “process” could be done by a computer, whether that computer is housed in a robot or embedded somewhere out of sight. So if intelligent machines can take over many of the jobs of today, what can you do to ensure your job prospects in the future? Some jobs will always be done by people. The reasons can vary greatly: economic, social, nostalgic or simply not practical for robots to do. If we consider that many of the jobs of the future have not been invented yet, we cannot be sure what those future jobs will actually look like, though futurists are not shy of making predictions.

While we may not know what outward form these jobs will take, we can still make a catalogue of the generic skills that will be valued highly.

Thinking skills for future workers In his book Five Minds for the Future, the Harvard professor Howard Gardner makes the case for cultivating a disciplined mind, being someone who can bring their attention to a laser-like focus and drill down to the essence of a subject, perceiving the simple truth of it, then to take this clarity to the next level by combining multiple ideas in new ways to create something interesting and perhaps useful. This is done by the synthesising mind and the creative mind.

Gardner describes the respectful mind that values diversity in people and looks for positive ways to interact, thus overcoming the “us and them” instinct that still creates so much conflict in human affairs.

Building on this is the ethical mind, of one who thinks about the big picture and how their personal needs can be brought into alignment with the greater good of the community – skills for a globally connected world.

The future will see a host of new technology for creating and communicating content. In-demand workers will be able to critically assess this content and find ways to communicate it to good effect.

Communication skills have always been important and will remain so.

Knowing how to deal with large data sets will be a handy skill; finding ways to make sense of the data and turn it into useful information.

This could involve devising new, multi-disciplinary and perhaps unconventional approaches to the challenges.

We already filter a deluge of information every day. Our grandparents were lucky, they had to deal with a lot less. People will need to be even better at managing the cognitive load, they will have the thinking skills to filter the deluge and find optimum solutions to problems.

When good collaboration tools exist for virtual project teams, there are few limits to what can be achieved. More projects will be done by such teams because the technology that supports them is getting better every year. It allows the right people, with the right skills at the right price to be employed, regardless of where they live. So it will be that people with the right virtual team skills will be in high demand.

Speaking of the virtual, Procedural Architects will be at a premium.

These are people who can design virtual environments and experiences that allow people to get things done and perhaps have some fun. This is what the minds behind Google, Youtube, Facebook, Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, eBay, LinkedIn, Pinterest, WordPress and MSN have done.

All of this leads us to the question; what actual jobs are likely to be in demand?

Employment specialists compile lists of what they think will be in demand, based on trends. These are some of the jobs that appear

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on multiple lists. The IT sector is likely to need: information security analysts, big data analysts, artificial intelligence and robotics specialists, applications developers for mobile devices, web developers, database administrators, business intelligence analysts, gamification designers, business/systems analysts and ethicists.

In other disciplines, there will be a need for: engineers of all kinds, accountants, lawyers, financial advisers, project managers, specialist doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists, veterinarians, psychologists, health services managers, schoolteachers, market research analysts, sales reps and construction workers (particularly bricklayers and carpenters).

Both lists are not exhaustive.

On the downside, occupations likely to shrink in demand include: agricultural workers, postal service workers, sewing machine operators, switchboard operators, data entry clerks and word processor typists.

The bottom line To position yourself favourably for the jobs of the future, become someone who can look at problems in unorthodox ways, seeing different angles and finding workable solutions. Be a multi-disciplinary, insatiably curious person who knows how to use the tools to model ideas and create prototypes. Possessed of an open mind and few fixed ideas about how things should be done, you nonetheless have a strong conscience and can operate outside of your comfort zone to achieve win-win outcomes. You are known for your integrity and resilience.

All of these qualities can be cultivated or perhaps rediscovered, since children often exhibit them in abundance. They have always been the way for creative, high-achieving people and they are still the way today and into the future. In the brave new world of the coming age of intelligent machines, it is these essentially human qualities that will be more important than ever. Some things will never change because human nature is what it is.

David Tuffley is a lecturer in applied ethics and socio-technical studies at Griffith University’s School of ICT. This article was originally published in The Conversation. www.theconversation.com www.griffith.edu.au

Robotics & Automation

When everything becomes automated, what becomes important?

James Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny started the trend to automation in 1764, and 250 years later it shows no sign of abating. By Peter Carney.

Breakthroughs in information and communications technology (ICT) are driving automation today. Increased computing power is permitting the processing of complex data from sensors in real time, enabling machines to be more responsive than ever. The more responsive a machine can be to its environment, the greater the chance it will encroach on the domain of work typically done by people.

Protective bars have usually encased machines. However, some machines, such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs), necessarily operate in unenclosed environments. The trend is changing, with previously caged robotic machines becoming uncaged and far more interactive with people.

For example, the exoskeletal-style robot.

This robot works as an augmentation to the industrial worker, facilitating the movement and manipulation of much heavier loads than any individual could handle.

Currently it is mostly large-scale manufacturing facilities that employ automation, as their scale is sufficient to offset the cost of implementing complex systems. Trends show an increase in machine complexity in parallel with their cost reduction, thus lowering the entry barriers for where automation takes hold. We can expect that small and medium manufacturing facilities will benefit from automation in the way that large-scale plants have. And so, by definition, manufacturing facilities will be the places that employ automation and robotics.

We have moved from an age where basic machines did simple repetitive tasks, to a time where sophisticated robots can undertake complex tasks. For organisations and societies postulating the impacts of these technologies, it is best to assume the growth and penetration of these technologies into workplaces will be exponential and rapid.

Similar to manufacturing is the automation of logistics. We already have automatic container terminals, AGVs in warehouses, driverless trains and trucks, and there are early tests of autonomous cars. Additionally, drone aircraft are a reality and drone ships do not seem far off.

People plus machines will equal success.

Increased automation will likely level the playing field between low-cost labour countries and high-cost labour countries, as well as large-scale facilities and smaller-scale ones.

How much this matters depends on the industry in question. In the US, for many manufacturing sectors, labour accounts for less than 20% of the cost of manufacturing.

In Asia this may be lower. In high-labour-cost countries, such as Australia, automation would have a significant benefit for labourintensive industries. Automation offers a way to keep Australian industries globally competitive.

Automation offers advantages beyond cost.

We will see, in addition to lower costs, automation brings a degree of process perfection, with benefits of less waste and high reliability.

The skills required to be successful in manufacturing will be process design and technology skills. Those organisations and societies that can mix people and machines well will be successful. The implications of this are far-reaching. It might be natural to resist the advance of technology to save jobs. But, in reality, only the embrace of technology will do this. There are very few manual telephone exchange operators in the world, but there are millions of people employed in the creation and distribution of mobile phones and their related technologies.

The marriage of automation to design Beyond automation, for the producer, there are other concerns. Energy and material costs matter. So too the cost of capital and access to markets. Scale has a role in this – not from the manufacturing need but from a purchasing perspective. As a general rule, the larger the scale, the better the price for energy, materials and capital through pure purchasing power. Depending on the industry, these factors matter more or less.

These are endowment factors and there is little companies can do to alter these.

For those companies in industries where endowments or privileged assets matter less, the race is on. A 21st century company, given modern communications, can sense and serve worldwide markets.

As markets shift somewhere in the world, the manufacturing facility needs to respond.

In a sense this has always been the case.

But ICT, automation and robotics have broadened the playing field, levelled but intensified the competition, and magnified the potential rewards.

Success factors will include a company’s ability to be responsive and agile. Strategy needs to drive ICT, automation, robotics, and people management. The factory of the future will need to support all these factors. When everything is automated, what is important is the astute marriage of automation, facilities, equipment and people.

Peter Carney is the global leader of supply chain advisory and analytics at Aurecon. www.aurecongroup.com

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Robotics & Automation

Entering a new era of human-robot collaboration The International Federation of Robotics states that demand for industrial robots will continue at an average annual growth rate of 12% between 2015 and 2017, and by an average of 16% in Asia/Australia.

As ABB prepares to showcase its robotics solutions at MTA2015, in Singapore from 14-17 April, Lim Say Leong, Assistant Vice-President – Marketing at ABB, discusses the emerging trends in automation technologies.

Small parts assembly is leading the charge in human-robot collaboration, where humans and machines are starting to work right next to each other, with no need for cages and other protective equipment or barriers.

Automation will become simpler and more user-friendly, such as modular plug-andproduce components that will enable people without extensive experience in robotics to programme and integrate a robot in the process.

ABB believes very strongly in a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) programming interface, so it is possible – perhaps even expected – that visual apps as well as programming by teaching (rather than coding) will greatly enhance the ease of programming for the next generation.

The tools that allow robots to interact with the world around them are also in development, such as advanced sensing and advanced gripping. In order to allow robots to do all the jobs that they are well suited for, they will need to develop more “human-like” abilities to find, identify and manipulate objects.

When combined with powerful processing capability, tools like force control and advanced 2D and 3D vision systems will create a kind of robotic “independence” and allow the robot to make “decisions” about what to do when it encounters the inevitable hiccups that arise in everyday operation. Already ABB has developed a new generation of Integrated Force Control and Integrated Vision to help make these advanced technologies available to more and more end-users.

In Asian markets, Singapore has always set the lead for countries; in its recent budget announcement it was disclosed that while its wages have caught up with developed countries, its productivity had been lagging in the last three years. This exposes a stark impediment in productivity growth especially, when businesses have to compete internationally.

Lim Say Leong, Assistant Vice-President, Marketing at ABB

Industries must act now to prepare themselves in integrated automation. Further automation will lead to a less labour-intensive and more productive future, with fewer resources and less time used to produce more goods at a high and consistent quality.

For manufacturers, robots not only bring productivity, but also huge reductions in energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. Automation lines equipped with vision systems can also operate without the need for ambient factory lighting or airconditioning (subject to the requirements of the manufactured product itself), allowing for the possibility of 24/7 operation with substantial energy savings.

Companies with a well-established manufacturing base can also leverage on systems that can collaborate and determine solutions that minimise the cost to the business. In Asia, companies manufacture items ranging from one-off design to large volume production of the same design.

These pose great challenges for robots to be innovative, and yet robots can be productive to meet the desired return on investment.

New generations of youth receive less job satisfaction with dirty, dangerous and dull tasks that are characteristic of some manufacturing processes. This creates a demand for more engaging and meaningful jobs, which could pose a challenge to manufacturers who will need to revamp their organisation of human resources. In fact, some small medium enterprises have started employing robotic automation as a means to retain talent and even attract their next generation to inherit the business.

Faced with an uncertain economic outlook, lower oil prices and increased market volatility, businesses have to rethink ways to add value to their products and services. Cheaper Asian countries have the competitive advantage of high volume and low cost in their production chain; players that will stand out are those who provide customisation and cater to the individual needs of customers. For example, product cycles in the electronics industry are getting shorter, with new models and functions being introduced at a blistering pace. Fast deployment and incredible flexibility are key to meeting the demands of low-volume but high-mix products.

In this regard, manufacturers can be flexible in switching between different products and processes with robots, rather than needing large-scale production with high product volume. By offering higher-quality products coupled with fresh varieties, companies can bring a difference to the table and disrupt the market. www.abb.com/au www.mta-asia.com

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Austech and the Manufacturers Pavilion are proudly owned and operated by AMTIL.

back in 2015 26th – 29th May 2015 Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre Profiling Australian Business for Australian Opportunity • Australian Manufacturers • Speaker Program • Networking Opportunities For more information visit www.amtil.com.au

Manufacturers Pavilion is co-located at Austech 2015

forum – Law

Five steps for carrying out an internal IP audit Dr. Victoria Longshaw of Houlihan2 Patent & Trade Mark Attorneys shows how to carry out an initial check on the health of your Intellectual Property portfolio.

Intellectual Property adds significant value to the bottom line of any business. It forms a valuable asset itself and, when strategically deployed, functions to protect your commercial territory and defend you against costly disputes with competitors. Simply by operating in the marketplace, many businesses have already generated Intellectual Property, whether they are aware of it or not. Do you know what Intellectual Property your business owns? Can you rightfully claim ownership of it when you need it? Here are a few tips on how to carry out an initial check on the health of your Intellectual Property portfolio:

Step 1 – Assessing your marketing collateral Many aspects of Intellectual Property are automatically protected under Australian law such as Copyright, common law Trade Marks, business reputation, and Confidential Information. However, certain measures must be in place in order to rely on the law under which these unregistered rights automatically arise: • Obtain a written assignment of Copyright in marketing materials from any author(s) who are not employees.

• Obtain a written assignment of Copyright in any logo that is designed by an outside graphic designer.

• Obtain a written assignment of Copyright in any database generated by an external entity.

• Use the Copyright symbol ©, the year and your Company’s name on the above material and documents referring to them.

• Check that you are not about to publicly disclose any information about your products that could be (a) patented or (b) protected by a Registered Design.

Step 2 – Keeping Confidential Information secret Supplier/client lists, financial information, business plans, projected sales figures, internal memoranda etc. all contain and constitute proprietary Confidential Information. To protect them from unauthorised disclosure, and to claim damages in the event of such a disclosure, such documents must be clearly labelled as Confidential and every person who has access to those documents must be made aware that it is confidential.

• Label each page of all confidential documents with the word “CONFIDENTIAL”.

• Implement written confidentiality policies with employees, and Non-Disclosure Agreements with suppliers and distributors.

• Separate Confidential Information into parts, limiting access.

• Ensure that employee contracts include appropriate confidentiality clauses.

Step 3 – Securing ownership of inventions, innovations, and designs Certain aspects of Intellectual Property are NOT automatically protected under Australian Law, such as inventions, innovations and designs. To protect this Intellectual Property, it is necessary to file an Application to register a Patent and/or a Design. Furthermore, while the Copyright of authored works of employees, such as marketing material and technical specifications, are automatically assigned to an employer under Australian law, rights in inventions, innovations, and designs are not. It is very important to have written evidence of the chain of title for inventions or designs that are created by your employees.

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• Ensure that employee contracts include appropriate assignment clauses for inventions and designs, relating specifically to their work; and/or • ensure that appropriate Assignment Deeds are executed by employees.

In Australia, and in most of our major trading partners, the system works on a first-to-file basis. Any inventions, innovations and designs must be kept absolutely secret before filing any application to register them as Patents and/or Designs, as public disclosure can destroy your chances of obtaining valid registered rights.

• Check in-house development projects for new, inventive subject matter that could be patented, such as new products and/or processes - it does not have to be “high-tech”.

• Check in-house development projects for new, distinctive designs, such as the shape, pattern or ornamentation of new products.

Step 4 – Keeping an eye on competitors and shoring up defences Relying on weaker common law rights to protect your Trade Marks may be risky, so obtaining Registered Trade Mark rights in your Mark and logo should be a priority. This can help stop other parties obtaining rights in a similar Trade Mark. Having a Registered Trade Mark can also be used to defend you against certain infringement actions launched against you.

• If you have not done so already, file Applications to register your Trade Mark(s).

Distributors of overseas companies should make sure that the Trade Marks they are operating under are registered and in force in Australia.

Similarly, franchisors are usually contractually-bound to ensure that their Trade Marks are registered and remain in force.

• Keep a watch on your own Intellectual Property portfolio and/or the Intellectual Property portfolios of any parent company with, or for which, you work.

• Ensure that obligatory renewal fees are paid on time so that your registrations remain valid and enforceable.

Consider keeping an eye on competitors’ Intellectual Property. This can indicate their business direction and provide you with options for opposing any Applications that could negatively affect the operation of your business.

• Keep a watch on your competitors’ Intellectual Property portfolio.

Step 5 – Creating IP Assets and bolstering the value of your business Intellectual Property assets that are owned by a Company can sometimes be seen by investors as more valuable than physical assets, such as office furniture.

• File Applications to patent your inventions and to register your Designs.

Houlihan2 assists with all aspects of Intellectual Property Law from obtaining registered rights to ensuring that functional confidentiality contracts and policies are in place.

Please contact Dr. Victoria Longshaw or Dr. Elizabeth Houlihan of Houlihan2 on (03) 9851 6016 or mail@houlihan2.com. www.houlihan2.com

forum – finance

Using “factoring finance” to increase cash flow “Factoring” of accounts receivables is explained here by Damian Sutherland of chartered accounting firm William Buck. The article explains the pros and cons of this form of debt-collection, which has become more popular since the GFC .

Factoring and debtor finance have been available in various forms for a number of years. They are quite different to traditional forms of bank finance but can be a genuine alternative when the latter is not available. They have become extremely popular since the GFC several years ago where we saw tightening of credit markets.

What is it and how does it work?

Factoring and debtor finance involve a business effectively selling its accounts receivable (debtors) to a financial institution (called a ‘factor’). At the point of invoicing, the financial institution providing the finance will pay the invoice at a discount. Often 70-80% is paid on the raising of the invoice, with the balance being paid net of the factored discount (commission) upon final collection of the invoice.

The commission, paid upon collection of the invoice, is the profit taken by the finance institution to cover the costs and risk associated with the facility.

Financial institutions providing debtor financing/factoring focus on the ‘credit worthiness’ of the receivables. In this respect, factoring is easier to obtain if you have a smaller volume of invoices with quality clients.

This contrasts with traditional lending where banks focus on the credit risk of the borrower as opposed to its customers. Furthermore, typically banks view accounts receivables as a liquid asset and are therefore reluctant to provide finance facilities with security against them.

Main differences in the facilities available One of the main differences in the various facilities that are available is whether the finance institution actually takes ownership of the receivables or if the receivables are merely used as a form of collateral for the financing provided.

In the case of the former, the finance company obtains the right to receive the payment of an invoice directly from the customer. It also has the right to implement its own debt collection policies in order to recover an unpaid debt. This can have both pros and cons.

Firstly, maintenance and collection of your receivables rests with the factoring company who will have significant experience and expertise in managing receivables. However, potential issues can arise if, for example, the factoring company is aggressive in its debt collection policies. This could cause damage to your relationships with your clients if not managed properly. Another concern is that some of your clients might not understand the nature of the facility and perceive it to be an indication of your organisation’s financial difficulties.

In the latter form of facility where the receivables are merely used as collateral, confidentially is maintained as actual ownership of the receivables is kept by the business and debt collection also remains the responsibility of the business. This can be an important factor for businesses whose customers may be sensitive to dealing with another organisation.

Advantages With factoring and debtor financing, cash is released as soon as invoices are raised and can be immediately reinvested back into a business for working capital requirements and overhead funding.

If you experience a dramatic increase in your volume of sales that requires you to obtain additional working capital, you will typically be required to go back to your bank for an extension. However,

debtor financing/factoring is linked to your trading levels so the facility increases proportionately with your business growth. As turnover grows, accounts receivable will increase and the factoring facility will support this.

Disadvantages One main disadvantage with factoring and debtor financing is that they can be costly facilities. The very nature of the facility means it has extra levels of administration. In addition to this, the financial institution is taking on added risk, which will obviously attract a premium.

As touched on above, loss of control over administration and debt collection processes can also be a significant disadvantage. It can mean an inability to directly manage customer relationships and some may customers may also perceive use of the facility as a sign of financial hardship.

What type of businesses does it suit?

Typically this type of financing is best suited to businesses in areas such as manufacturing, wholesale, transport, business services, printing, temporary labour hire etc.

It has particular relevance with the manufacturing industry where businesses require significant funding for capital equipment requirements and stock turnover. Manufacturing businesses typically have a slow turn around from the point of investment to when the account is paid. Unfortunately wages, rent and overheads are immediate and this can put serious pressure on cash flow needs.

Obtaining a facility that can accommodate a business’s fluctuating and demanding financing requirements is paramount for longterm success. So although debtor financing and factoring is not for everyone, it certainly has merit for many manufacturing and distribution businesses.

Damian Sutherland and Tony Mitchem are directors of William Buck (Vic) Pty Ltd Chartered Accountants, based in Hawthorn East, Melbourne. They specialise in the manufacturing industry particularly in assisting businesses progress.

William Buck is a leading network of Chartered Accountants and advisors with offices across Australia and New Zealand, wholly owned and operated in Australasia. We’re more than just advisors; offering a full range of services.

As an AMTIL member your first meeting with us is complimentary and gives you access to one of our directors to access a wealth of advice, such as: asset protection strategies; equipment and property financing; budgeting; profitability analysis and product costing.

If you would like to arrange a complimentary appointment please contact Damian or Tony on 03 9824 8555. www.williambuck.com AMT April 2015

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forum – OHS

Changes to Australian Standards impact new machinery As the interaction between machinery and humans becomes more complex, Australian designers, manufacturers, suppliers and importers must keep up with recent revisions to the Australian Safety of Machinery Standard. Scott Moffat explains Australia’s move toward the European/ISO standards, its revisions and additions and what this means for importing machinery and CE Marking. In light of the changes, European-based training programs on Machinery Safety are now very relevant to Australia.

Critical changes to the Australian Standards on safety of machinery, AS4024, are substantial and need to be fully understood by anyone considering the purchase of new machinery.

• Guarding Parts 1801 (Safety Distances) and 1803 (Minimum Gaps) are also now both direct text adoptions of their international standards ISO 13857 and ISO 13854.

The updates are intended to align Australian standards more closely with European and global standards and strengthen workplace safety.

Continuing to update AS 4024.1 Series to European standards is a logical step as they lead the world in this area of machinery safety.

With the new changes a common question our customers ask is “What does this mean for importing machinery, and the role of CE Marking?”

The Standard has also been recently adopted by New Zealand and is now a joint AS/NZS Standard as well as becoming set to incorporate the new conveyor standard (AS 1755) in the near future.

The changes to the Standard are important as the best way to reduce the risks of working with, or near, machinery while maximising productivity and efficiency is to ensure that machine safety is included in the very beginning of the design phase.

The recently released Safe Work Australia report (Safe Design Saves Lives, Nov 2014) highlighted the issue and concluded that a high number of work-related fatalities could have been avoided if risks had been eliminated through safe design.

The study’s examination of workplace fatalities over a five year period showed that 36% or 188 deaths were found to be either definitely or possibly design-related.

This study examined 523 worker fatalities for which there was sufficient information on the circumstances to make a judgement on the contribution of unsafe design to the incident.

Of these, 63 fatalities (12%) were determined to have been either definitely caused by unsafe design or design-related factors clearly contributed to the fatality.

A further 125 fatalities (24%) were considered possibly design-related: these included incidents where the circumstances suggested that unsafe design played a role or were incidents that might have been prevented had existing safety technology been used.

The statistics are a compelling reason why anyone considering modifications to existing machinery or the purchase of new equipment should fully understand the changes to the Standard.

With the adoption of a number of the European standards, companies looking to import machinery from Europe should now be able to reuse some aspects of the safety design and technical work as it is now relevant to Australia as opposed to it being a very separate process before. The work conducted to demonstrate compliance to ISO 13849 is now a lot more relevant with the new AS4024 Standard especially the new part 1503 that use the Performance Level Approach.

Also with the recent changes, there a number of new paths to demonstrate Engineering competence with Machinery Safety.

The move toward the European/ISO standards means that a lot of the European-based training programs on Machinery Safety are now very relevant to Australia. A variety of TÜV organisations offer assessment based accreditation for machinery safety. For example, Pilz offers a Certified Machinery Safety Expert (CMSE) course which is accredited by TÜV Nord along with a number of others in the market.

So if you are purchasing and/or importing machinery the critical questions that now need to be addressed when it comes to machinery safety are: • Is my equipment provider aware of the recent changes in the Machinery Safety Standard, AS4024?

In total, 19 Parts of AS/NZS 4024.1 have been revised, two new parts have been added, and four parts superseded and withdrawn.

• Can my equipment provider supply me with the correct supporting documentation to demonstrate this?

The Main changes to the Standard are:

• Do we have the internal capabilities to independently assess whether the machinery complies with the standard or not?

• The risk assessment approach parts 1201 & 1303 (new) have been updated to reflect the global standards of ISO 12100 (Machine Safety, General principles of Design, risk assessment and risk reduction) and ISO 14121-2 (Practical guidance on Risk Assessment methods).

• A new Part 1503 that now gives the practitioner the option to design safety-related control systems using ISO 13849-1 and the Performance Level (PL) approach.

• Parts 1602 (Interlocking devices) and 1604 (Emergency Stop) are now both direct text adoptions of their international standards, ISO 14119 and ISO 13850 respectively.

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Pilz safety experts will be attending Austech 2015 in May in Melbourne and will be available to answer any questions on the changes to the Standard and its impact.

Scott Moffat is Managing Director of Pilz Australia.

Pilz is a trusted provider of safety products and services to leading national and international industrial companies. It provides viable solutions to the most complex safety issues in a wide range of industry domains. Pilz’s local team helps companies apply best manufacturing practise to safely optimise the availability and productivity of their plants worldwide.

Ph: 1300 723 334. Email: s.moffat@pilz.com.au www.pilz.com.au

forum – Training

Traditional learning: is it dead?

Ron Pollak explores the different (free) learning options available today courtesy of the modern world.

Sitting down in a coaching session with a CEO recently, he outlined how he had set himself a goal this year of reading two management books. While it’s a great goal to have (perhaps with a personal commitment to a deadline) it didn’t seem like a lot of fun. It also limits him from undertaking so many more learning opportunities that are enjoyable. So, we discussed what’s available today that the wonderful world of technology has brought us. And it’s brought to us in short, manageable bites which are, in the main, delivered for free.

TED Talks Have you discovered TED Talks? No. Well you’re missing really good learning opportunities. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talks are free.

They are 5 to 20 minutes in length and they provide new and innovative ideas from experts in their area. Here are a few that you might enjoy.

Simon Sinek One of my absolute favourites comes from Simon Sinek. Sinek’s talk is 18 minutes long. Titled, “How great leaders inspire action”, he gives examples from Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers. These help you look at how some businesses excel. At the same time, you see real passion from Sinek. It comes through in his presentation. It’s a style that you would envy delivering at your next management meeting. Better still, it’s not difficult to copy if you’re passionate about what you do.

Julian Treasure Aptly named, Treasure, provides insights into how we can listen better, in a talk, titled, “5 Ways to Listen Better. It’s a powerful 7 minute talk.

In another talk, this one 10 minutes, Treasure offers ideas on “How to speak so that people want to listen.”

RSA Animate Here’s an innovative way of presenting ideas. The RSA Animate series was conceived as an innovative, accessible and unique way of illustrating and sharing the world-changing ideas from the RSA’s free public events program. The way it works is this: While a speaker covers his topic, a cartoonist (if that’s the right term) characterises the talk with pictures. It’s ideal for those of us who don’t listen well. You listen, read and look at pictures.

The first RSA presentation I saw was, The Science of Persuasion. This 12 minute summary of research by Robert Cialdini and Steve Martin (not that Steve Martin) into why people say, “Yes to others”. Cialdini and Martin talk about six shortcuts to understanding human behaviour.

Other RSA Animate lessons include; Re-Imagining Work - The Truth About Dishonesty, and Dan Pink’s talk on the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.

MOOCs Massive Open Online Courses are on offer from educational institutions, including leading universities from around the world. Even these are free to students.

They:

Joseph Pine

• are delivered online for free

After Sinek, watch Joseph Pine’s dissertation on “What Consumers Want”. In this TED Talk, Pine outlines how consumers strive for ‘a positive experience when they shop’. Walk into an Apple store and it’s full of passionate young, and not-so-young people who deliver a customer experience that is enticing.

• do not have any entry requirements

It’s easy to say that it’s not possible to get this type of experience when you purchase products from a manufacturing company. And you’re right. That’s because you actually believe it’s not possible.

Interestingly, most businesses I visit today, feel that the one differential they have over their customers is their level of service. Pine’s talk highlights that service is becoming a commodity and most businesses are fooling themselves when they feel their service level is substantively better than that of their competitors.

Dan Ariely If you want to smile at yourself, watch Ariely. I got so excited, I bought his book. Ariely is a behavioural economist. He plays games with people’s behaviour. He calls them social science/behaviour experiments. If you watch Ariely’s talk, “Are we in control of our own decisions?” you will find yourself feeling part of an Ariely experiment.

The best part is you’ll learn something about yourself and how you make – or don’t make decisions.

Ariely also entertains us with his talk, “What makes us feel good about our work?” In this talk Ariely describes an experiment that shows the impact of a small amount of acknowledgement on someone’s work.

He also explains how damaging ignoring the work done by your team has on their motivation.

• can be led by world-class academics • are self-directed, with help from a community of learners online • can lead to a ‘qualification’ and here’s where the cost comes in. You pay the institution which provided the course, for the qualification - certification.

Free Online Publications While there are probably hundreds I know nothing about, I receive regular magazines from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (Knowledge@Wharton) and McKinseys.

To give you an indication of the relevance of this source of learning, three recent articles from McKinseys were, “Turning pricing power into profit”, “Building marketing and sales capabilities to beat the market, and “Six steps to transform your marketing and sales capabilities”.

Conclusion Your bookshelf is going to be empty. How many of those books are unread, anyway? At the same time, your life is going to be enriched in small chunks, but with great ideas!

Pollak Consulting &Training, with experience in sales, management/leadership, personal development and customer service, provides over 80 courses which can be delivered as open publicly-scheduled courses, or as customised in-company training, conference training and consulting services.

Ron Pollak is Managing Director, Pollak Consulting & Training Pty Ltd. Phone: 02 90 990 543 or 0407 200 617 www.ronpollak.com.au

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manufacturing history

Big wheels & little wheels – the story of Sir Laurence John Hartnett (1898 – 1986)

Part 3

Time to enlist

UK-born Sir Laurence Hartnett arrived in Australia in 1934. He was known as Australia’s ‘Father of the Holden’, but he was much more than that as he tirelessly devoted himself to the country he loved via his visionary “Made in Australia” campaign. His contributions to Australia included being appointed Director of Ordnance Production in World War II, setting up the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation and numerous other ventures. Our previous instalment saw the young Sir Laurence’s introduction to the world of machine tools during his employment at the great UK engineering firm – Vickers - which was rapidly expanding and producing a wide range of munitions due to the outbreak of WW1. The curious and intrepid Laurence decided it was time for him to actually use the warfare tools instead of making them.

Accordingly he enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps.

T

he year was 1914 and I was transferred to Vickers Plant at Crayford (UK). WW1 had just broken out and England’s engineering industry mushroomed as orders for engines and weapons flooded in. At fIrst I worked in the main store as one of the assistants to the storeman. This was to help me learn the thousand and one items of supply that flow in and out in the manufacturing work. From the store, I was moved to the tool-room crib. A few more weeks and I began work in the tool-room proper. From time to time the plant superintendent and general manager would send my morale soaring when they’d stop during a tour of the plant to talk to me and question me about my progress.

As the months went by, the expansion at Crayford really began to get under way. The few small buildings were soon lost among the great new structures that had gone up to accommodate the army of new workers that came in. And still more and more came.

Within two and a half years. Crayford’s original staff of three hundred had grown to twenty thousand men and women, and the plant had become one of the biggest munitions manufacturing centres in Britain.

Its tool-room alone employed eight hundred skilled men.

Importantly for me, Vickers, Crayford, had probably the widest range of different munitions to be found in any plant. I learned how to operate the toolroom lathes, milling machines, shapers, grinders and boring machines and how to scrutinize a blueprint. I learned how to machine and build up machining fixtures to an accuracy of half a thousandth of an inch and even less, which means that the temperature of the room in which you are measuring a part is of significance, and that in spite of all the machine-tools, instruments and equipment, the fine skill of the toolmaker has to come into play. But what was probably of even more importance to me, as later events were to show, I came to know and understand the men and women who work in factories. I wonder how many youths

The “top secret” paravane - an underwater defensive device against mines - being launched over the ship’s side via a small crane.

with my genteel background could have accepted so quickly the dirt, the noise, the bustle and the coarseness of factory life? I had come into this atmosphere straight from a snobbish English public school, from a middle-class Edwardian English home where an awareness of one’s “position” had been instilled over the years by a reserved Uncle Michael - a home life where such vulgar subjects as commerce and trade were never discussed, and in which guests were always professional men, doctors, teaplanters, army offIcers, diplomats. Straight from that into overalls and to the grease and the scream of machinery and the uncouth humour of the factory hands: two worlds, completely, utterly different. But fortunately I loved the factory life and the often rough-and-ready but very human factory workers. They had qualities of loyalty, honesty and diligence that I knew instinctively were good and right.

They did the best possible job for their firm and for their country. Through them I formed a lasting admiration and an affection for the working man.

The Vickers training for the fortunate few who were management apprentices was

very thorough. As a result of the long hours-generally about eighty a week - I took about half the normal time to cover what was prescribed. I felt completely confident to visualize and in many aspects actually to do the work on a project from its conception to its mass-production. Almost every month there was a new, exciting, top secret project. One of the most hush-hush was Commander Burney’s “Otter”, the minesweeping paravane. I was very conscious of my good fortune, but as the war dragged on, the feeling that I should be using the tools of war rather than just making them gradually took possession of me. I had already had one try at enlisting, but had been blocked by Vickers. Now I made up my mind to have another try. At that time, I was working with the chief aero-engine tester in the engine test-house, and it seemed only logical and right that I should now have experience with these aero engines powering an aeroplane.

This time, I was listened to quietly as I spoke of my earnest desire to serve in the Royal Flying Corps or the Royal Naval Air Service.

Finally Vickers gave me their blessing

This is an extract from ‘Big Wheels & Little Wheels’, by Sir Laurence Hartnett as told to John Veitch, 1964. © Deirdre Barnett.

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To be continued…

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Shane Infanti – Chief Executive Officer AMTIL

AMTIL supports Australian Technologies Competition AMTIL is pleased to once again be a supporting partner to the Australian Technologies Competition, which is looking for Australia’s best technology companies.

The competition involves the assessment, mentoring, profiling and promotion of innovative and emerging technologies that have the potential to enhance industry efficiency, resource use and competitiveness. SMEs that own core IP, have strong commercial potential and increased industry efficiency are encouraged to enter.

Through the Business Accelerator Program, semi-finalists will be given extensive mentoring and provided with connections and opportunities during 2015 to increase speed to market and facilitate access to export markets. This program is unique for the Australian market and enables emerging technology companies to make a step change in their development.

Award categories are: • Advanced Manufacturing Technologies • Built Environment Technologies • Energy Technologies • Food and Agri Technologies • Global Development Technologies • Mining Technologies • Innovative Regions – for the region that provides the greatest support to emerging technology companies.

AMTIL has been a Competition Partner for a number of years and one of the reasons we are supportive is that it is not just a competition to win an award. The Federal Department of Industry has committed to partially fund the mentoring and showcasing components of the competition and this is excellent news, as it allows the competition entrants to receive the valuable part of the program, that is, advice to build a business from the ground up and assistance in marketing and promotion.

These are the areas that AMTIL believes emerging companies need support in, and the competition has done an excellent job over the past five years in providing this service.

The sharing of experience and knowledge to help young companies connect and grow has helped many previous competition entrants on the road to success.

Key Dates for the year are now finalised: • 25 March - Entries Open • 19 May - Entries Close • 15 June – Semi-finalists announced • 22/23 July - Mentoring Workshop at Australian Technology Park, Sydney • 12-24 August - Finals Judging – including Industry Association input to sector awards • 25 August – Judging Workshop • 31 August - Finalists Announced • 15 October - Showcase & Awards event For more information on the Australian Technology Competition go to www.austechcomp. com or email john.obrien@austechcomp.com.au

AMTILinside

Telstra – Do business more smartly AMTIL has linked up with Telstra Business Centre Rowville to help you get the most from telecoms.

Manufacturing SMEs need to focus on strategies that will improve and enhance our businesses into the future, but often we get tied down on day-to-day operations and run out of time. One major area of opportunity lies in making better use of human resources. All businesses rely heavily on staff to promote and deliver services and products. Imagine if each of your employees could gain an extra hour a day to spend talking to customers, building relationships and delivering on promises. Well you can.

The proliferation of mobile applications and the technology that they utilise has become much more affordable and accessible. Our friends continuously tell us of the latest app on their smartphone or tablet.

While many are lifestyle-based, just as many are business-focused.

There are apps for accounting, invoicing, document and knowledge management, staff management, geo-location, real-time ordering and requests, and more. All can be used on the road or at your customer’s premises because they are truly mobile. Increasing numbers of businesses are now run from tablet devices and mobile phones using a number of basic applications. But there is so much to choose from.

How do know which applications and hardware you need and how do you integrate them into one solution? The answer is: you need a trusted advisor to provide advice and tailor an end-to-end solution that can be ramped up and down depending on your business needs and as staff levels and budgets change.

The team at Telstra Business Centre Rowville is passionate about supporting businesses all over Australia. This is why it is one of Australia’s leading business centres for Telstra. The team is Telstra business-certified solutions professionals, specialising in mobile phone, tablet and data devices and plans, as well as the applications that run on them. It is also a leading provider of office phone systems, ‘on-hold’ advertising and promotions, as well as SMS texting opportunities.

No matter what size your business is, there is a combination of mobile devices and applications that will help you get back to the important task of focusing on your business.

To take advantage, contact Telstra Business Centre Rowville on 1300 793 684 and ask for Niraj, or email amtil@TBCOuterEast.com.au

Sink your power bills with Make It Cheaper We’ve partnered with Make It Cheaper to bring a new area of value to AMTIL members.

We know as well as anyone that running a manufacturing business is hard work, and margins are often extremely tight. This is why we’re calling on owners and financial decision-makers in the industry to save themselves time, hassle and money by using Make It Cheaper’s simple service.

Make It Cheaper offers an easy and efficient route into the sometimes murky world of the business energy market, providing a comprehensive comparison of gas and electricity prices and setting up the switch to a new contract on their customer’s behalf. Launched in the UK in 2007, Make It Cheaper has been saving money for Australian businesses and home-owners for more than three years. With a Net Promoter Score of 52%, they tick the box for customer services too. Better rates and cheaper bills beckon – leading, of course, to lower overheads and healthier profits.

If power bills are neglected and allowed to fester without proactive action by the firm’s owner or decision-maker, it’s almost certain they’ll end up being more expensive than they could be. AMTIL believes there are thousands of manufacturing businesses in Australia who are

paying too much, effectively throwing hard-earned dollars down the drain – which is why we’ve sought out the expertise to put this right and make a tangible impact on your P&L for very little effort.

The number of energy retailers supplying power to Australia’s businesses has increased hugely in recent years – and they all reserve their most competitive prices for people who seek them out. For SMEs in general, Make It Cheaper saves its customers an average of $967 a year – while for big energy users like manufacturers the savings tend to be around the 20% mark. So if you’re currently spending $25k a year on power, for example, you could easily see that figure come in closer to $20k. Contractually, most businesses are free to switch whenever they want.

As industry ambassadors, we want manufacturing businesses to realise these savings. With firms in our sector making up around a fifth of Make It Cheaper’s existing customer base, we believe we’ve chosen the service provider that can make this happen.

To talk to an expert at Make It Cheaper about your power switch, call directly on 1300 839 899.

At your service.

AMTIL supports its members through its select range of AMTIL Service Partners.

1252/BAMTIL

www.amtil.com.au/Membership/Service-Partners

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AMTILinside

Austech 2015 – The must-attend event with domestic onshoring on the rise Amid growing signs of manufacturing operations returning to Australia that had previously been moved offshore, this year’s Austech exhibition – to be held in Melbourne from 26 to 29 May – will be more unmissable than ever.

“The weaker Australian dollar is starting to drive manufacturers back to Australia in a sign the economy is adjusting to a post-mining boom world,” BlueScope Steel boss Paul O’Malley said recently. “After a very strong trend toward offshoring, we are starting to see some domestic onshoring for the first time in almost six years.”

Indeed, while some manufacturers may have opened the New Year with reductions in sales, production and new orders, the fall in the value of the Australian dollar could stimulate the manufacturing sector over the coming months. This year’s Austech exhibition comes at the right time, it seems, and the show, co-hosted with National Manufacturing Week (NMW), is expected to attract a combined total of over 10,000 visitors.

Owned and operated by the Australian Manufacturing Technology Institute Limited (AMTIL), Austech provides a forum for visitors to not only view the latest technology available today but also talk about applications that help them provide value-added, innovative and hightech solutions. The principal focuses at the fair are machine tools for metal cutting and forming, production systems, high-precision tools, CAD/CAM, and accessories.

“Being present at Austech is an absolute must for all manufacturers of production technology aiming to serve customers on the Australian market and to demonstrate their competence, efficiency and capacity to them,” says AMTIL Events Manager and Austech organiser Kim Warren. “Now that we see a first positive trend towards onshoring, Austech is an event not to be missed by owners and managers of job shops, manufacturing facilities or research departments. In order to be competitive, they require efficient manufacturing technology, comprehensive engineering skills and good service.”

Thousands of industrial decision-makers regularly attend Austech and NMW to get ideas and find ways to cut costs and get more work.

One regular visitor is Eric Woodgate, Managing Director of Shamic Sheetmetal, who says: “We attend Austech regularly, and purchased our Amada fibre laser cutting machine after the last exhibition.”

Hare & Forbes customer Michael Arena from Arena Engineering is another regular visitor to the show, where he sees new technology demonstrated and chooses the best for his needs. Ultimately, it is about finding ways to cut costs and get more work; which is required to keep up with technology.

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All under one roof From 26 to 29 May, the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre will be the place to be for all of Australia’s industrial decision makers, hosting several major industry events under one roof: Austech, with a focus on machine tools for metal cutting and forming, production systems, high-precision tools, CAD/CAM and accessories; NMW, showcasing the latest products covering sectors and technologies that are driving industry growth including sustainable manufacturing and engineering services; the Safety First Conference & Expo; the SMART Supply Chain & Logistics Conference; and the Inside 3D Printing Conference.

Visitors to the Inside 3D Printing Conference will get the chance to gain an insight into the latest cutting-edge developments in the fastgrowing field of additive manufacturing. The two-day conference will take place on 26-27 May, with exhibits remaining open throughout Austech. Session topics will explore new opportunities and challenges for industrial and consumer 3D printing efforts, as well as the best strategies for a range of industries including product development, medicine, automotive, technology, software, and more.

Running alongside the exhibition, the Victorian Government Manufacturing Hall of Fame Gala Awards Dinner will be held on the evening of Tuesday 26 May. The Manufacturing Hall of Fame recognises Victoria’s most advanced and export-oriented manufacturers, companies who excel in business innovation and productivity and contribute to the Victorian economy.

Of course, the Hall of Fame gala ceremony will offer fantastic opportunities to network, as will Austech and NMW’s Happy Hour in the afternoon of the same day. Exhibitors and visitors are all welcome.

Other social and networking events will be held over the four days of the show.

AMTILinside

As a biennial event, Austech 2015 is a show not to be missed by anyone involved in advanced manufacturing in this country. Whether you are based in Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland or Victoria – make sure to gather for this special event in May and dominate the competition by choosing the best technology for your needs.

For more information about Austech 2015 or to enquire about booking exhibition space, please call AMTIL on 03 9800 3666, or email Events Manager Kim Warren on kwarren@amtil.com.au.

Austech is now open for registrations. To avoid the last minute rush and queues during the event, register online. www.austechexpo.com.au

Manufacturers Pavilion – showcasing excellence When you visit Austech 2015, be sure to come and see the Manufacturers Pavilion, a unique showcase of the best in Australian manufacturing. This area of the exhibition allows manufacturing companies to promote their capabilities and learn about new opportunities available to help them grow their businesses.

Throughout the duration of Austech, the Manufacturers Pavilion will also provide the venue for an impressive schedule of presentations from renowned industry experts. Among the subjects explored over the course of the speakers schedule are: • Innovation or Imposition – Which is it to be? Innovation is the essential turbulence that drives business growth and development. The alternative is stagnation, and ultimately business failure. Indeed recent statistics reveal that without innovation the life expectance of a business in these fastmoving times is less than ten years.

• Pushing the Boundaries of Sheet Forming – A University of Queensland and QMI Solutions research project.

Incremental sheet forming (ISF) is a flexible manufacturing process in which complex 3D shapes are formed from a sheet of metal using a simple moving tool (stylus). In such a way an infinite variety of shapes can be made using one machine (like 3D printing with sheet). Also ISF allows sheet metal to be stretched much further than in conventional stamping operations, well beyond the common forming limit curve.

makes the modern SME competitive. See if you have these five components in your company, and what you can do to get them.

• Maximise the value of your business. Business valuations normally focus on financial statements, but there are many intangible drivers of value within a business that are not captured in a typical valuation. Core Value combines a business valuation with a business improvement tool, enabling the capture of all value drivers across a business and offering a proven way for increasing the value of any firm.

• Economies of 3D Printing Sand Cores – A University of Queensland and QMI Solutions research project. Learn about the application of 3D printing technology to produce sand cores for use in manufacturing castings with complicated shapes. In this research project, eight sets of moulds were produced with sand core 3D printing technology. The 3D printed moulds were then used to produce castings at the White Industries foundry in Dalby, Queensland.

• Five Essential Competitive Components for SMEs. The components that make an SME competitive in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis are very different to that of the pre-GFC days. We’ve used data from over 800 companies to identify the five essential common characteristics of what

Other topics include: ‘Accessing Opportunities on Major Projects: The SME Experience’, by Don Matthews of the Industry Capability Network (ICN); and ‘Transitioning out of Automotive’ by Richard Reilly of the Federation of Automotive Products Manufacturers (FAPM).

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AMTILinside

Additive Manufacturing Network – Update on progress Shane Infanti gives an update on a number of activities that have taken place over the past six months and what is planned for the coming months.

There have been a number of events over the past six months including: • The launch of 3D Central, an Advanced Manufacturing Centre located at the head office of Objective 3D in Carrum Downs.

• A 3D Printing Overview presented by 3D Printing Today held at the Mulgrave Country Club.

• A Forum on Medical Manufacturing held at RMIT’s Advanced Manufacturing Precinct in Carlton and focused on additive manufacturing in the medical devices sector.

• The Opening of the Australian Research Council Industrial Transformation Research Hub at the Monash Centre for Advanced Manufacturing.

• The AusBiotech Advanced Manufacturing Summit held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sydney.

• VCAMM event on “Practical Engagement with Additive Manufacturing” held at RMIT’s Advanced Manufacturing Precinct.

All of these events were supported by AMTIL and promoted through the Network. I would be interested on any feedback from people who attended any of these events.

You may recall that AMTIL is a Core Participant and Portal Organisation for the proposed Innovative Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre (CRC). We have committed (along with the Ai Group and the Small Technology Cluster) a total of $9m over the next seven years for industry engagement into additive manufacturing research. This commitment allows for an ongoing mechanism by which Network Members and SMEs can engage with the CRC over this timeframe. By way of an update, this proposal for the CRC is on Minister Macfarlane’s desk awaiting signoff, which we are very confident of achieving.

There is currently a review of the CRC Program underway. On behalf of the Network, I met with David Miles late last year to put forward our input into the review process. We expect this review to be presented to Minister Macfarlane this month and a response shortly afterwards.

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As part of our collaboration with the Industry Precinct (META) late last year, we formed a core team of Network members and conducted three workshops just prior to Christmas. The outcome from these workshops was to gather the necessary information by which a Roadmap and Strategic Plan can be developed. This information has been collated and the planning process is underway. It is intended that by mid-year we will have an action plan to share with Network members.

In addition, the establishment of an online platform that will enable the broader Network to communicate, share ideas and facilitate activities, has been developed. As part of the Australian Government’s initiative to transition from Innovation Precincts to Industry Growth Centres, the online platform is currently under review. Former Managing Director of IBM Australia, Mr Andrew Stevens, was recently appointed as Chairman of the Advanced Manufacturing Industry Growth Centre. I will keep you all informed of progress over the coming months on how AMTIL and the Additive Manufacturing Network will engage with Mr Stevens through the facilitation and industry consultation steps.

We have negotiated with Meckler Media (global organisers of 3D printing conferences) for them to run this conference alongside Austech in Melbourne. This is a great outcome for industry, as it will allow delegates to visit the major Additive Manufacturing exhibition and conference at the one time. Austech, which incorporates the Additive and Digital Manufacturing Exhibition and Manufacturers Pavilion, is running from 26-29 May 2015.

The 3D Printing Conference will be held on 26 and 27 May. AMTIL is an Export Market Development Grant (EMDG) Approved Body and Network members are able to tap into this. We are currently in discussions with Austrade and AusIndustry about running an Additive Manufacturing trade mission later this year.

We will continue to have regular updates in AMT on what is happening with the Network and on upcoming events and activities. If you want to join the Network it is free to AMTIL members and you can enquire about AMTIL membership by emailing sinfanti@amtil.com.au

AMTIL FOOTY TIPPIng 2015

It’s on Again!

AMTIL is excited to announce we’re once again running our footy tipping competition for season 2015.

Yep, all the anguish, all the voodoo spells and ulitmately all the glory is once again up for grabs. The drill is as per previous years… get your tips in BEFORE the bounce of the first game of each round – pretty simple.

First prize is a delicious $1,000 but more importantly, the title of ‘CHAMP’ is what we’re all really after.

FIRST PRIZE

$1000 2nd PRIZE • 3rd prize

$500 • $300

At time of printing, Rd 1 would have been completed

Australian Manufacturing Technology Institute Limited

Keeping it Simple.

One Membership, Many Benefits.

connect.inform.grow.

MeMbershIp pAckAges AvAILAbLe AMTIL membership for companies, individuals and supporters within the precision engineering and advanced manufacturing sector.

For more information visit www.amtil.com.au or contact corporate services Manager greg chalker on 03 9800 3666 or gchalker@amtil.com.au

1220AMTIL

www.amtil.com.au

industry calendar

Please Note: It is recommended to contact the exhibition organiser to confirm before attending event

INTERNATIONAL Hannover Messe Germany, Hannover 13-17 April 2015 Covers the industrial value-adding chain at a single location – from individual components to the complete smart factory. Current hot topics such as Industry 4.0, energy efficiency and lightweight construction will be discussed. www.hannovermesse.de/home MTA2015 Singapore 14-17 April 2015 Asia’s leading precision engineering exhibition.

Serves high-value sectors such as aerospace, complex equipment, electronics, energy, medical technology and oil & gas, marine & offshore engineering. Meets these industries’ growing demand for fully integrated precision engineering capabilities. www.mta-asia.com Intermold Japan 15-18 April 2015 Machine tools; metal forming/grinding/moulding machines, CAD/CAM and related equipment www.intermold.jp CIMT China, Beijing 20-24 April 2015 14th China international machine tools show.

Brings together the most advanced machine tool products in the world. www.cimtshow.com PMTS USA, Ohio 21-23 April 2015 Precision Machining Technology Show for manufacturers of precision machined parts.

Includes cutting tools, automatic screw machines; lathes, CNC turning centres, EDM equipment, accessories. www.pmts.com Blech India India, Mumbai 22-25 April 2015 Exhibition for the sheet metal-working industry. www.blechindia.com/2015 AmCon USA Colorado, 28-29 April 2015 Kansas City 12-13 May 12-13, 2015 Arizona 2-3 June 2015 New York 23-24 September 2015 Texas 6-7 October 2015 Utah 27-28 October Michigan 10-11 November 2015 Design & contract manufacture expo. from prototypes to production parts. Includes printing; forming/fab; machining; engineering; prototyping; assembly. www.amconshows.com Aistech USA, Ohio 4-7 May 2015 Iron & steel technology conference and exposition. Includes the International Congress on the Science and Technology of Ironmaking. www.aist.org/conference-expositions/ aistech

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Fabtech Mexico Mexico, Monterray 5-7 May 2015 Co-located with AWS Weldmex, METALFORM Mexico and COATech. Latest innovations in metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing. http://fabtechmexico.com

Intec India, Coimbatore 5-9 June 2015 Industrial trade fair. IncludesMachine Tools and Accessories, automation, material handling, software. http://intec.codissia.com

Eastec USA, Massachusetts 12-14 May 2015 Includes design, engineering & rapid technologies tooling, workholding & machining accessories, automation, precision manufacturing equipment. www.easteconline.com

Austomation Technology East USA, New York 9-11 June 2015 The newest technologies, equipment, products, and services relating to custom automation and assembly; robotics; vision inspection systems; control software/hardware; and more. http://atxeast.designnews.com

Intermach Thailand, Bangkok 13-16 May 2015 Sheet metal fabrication technology and machinery exhibition. Co-located with Subcon Thailand and Sheet Metal Asia www.intermachshow.com

ITM Poland Poland 9-12 June 2015 Machtool machines and tools exhibition.

Includes: Machine tools for metal machining; robotics; rapid-technologies. http://machtool.mtp.pl/en

FEIMAFE Brazil 18-23 May 2015 International machine tools and integrated manufacturing systems trade fair for machinetools and quality control in Latin America www.feimafe.com.br/en

Western Manufacturing Technology Show Canada, Edmonton 15-17 June 2015 Western Canada’s largest manufacturing technology event. Includes machine tools, tooling, metal fabrication, automation, advanced manufacturing. www.wmts.ca

Metaltech Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 20-23 May 2015 Event for the machine tool, metalworking and manufacturing industry, hosting providers of metalworking and machine tools technologies www.tradelink.com.my/metaltech Metalloobrabotka Russia, Moscow 25-29 May 2015 16th International Specialised Exhibition for Equipment, Instruments and Tools for the Metalworking Industry. State-of-theart technological solutions in the Russian engineering industry. www.metobr-expo.ru/en Amtex India, Mumbai 29 May - 1 June 2015 Asian machine tool exhibition. Includes machining centres, metal forming machine tools; drilling and boring machines; milling and grinding machines; CAD/CAM. www.amtex2015.com/event.html The Big M USA, Detroit 2-4 June 2015 Latest ideas, innovations, and technologies and dynamic and immersive technology experiences. Expert manufacturers success and transforming manufacturing ideas. www.bigmevent.com West Texas Industrial & Tool Show USA, Texas 3-4 June 2015 Showcase of industrial products and services in this rapidly expanding industrial region. www.expoindustrialshows.com/westtexas. htm

International Paris Air Show France, Paris 15-21 June 2015 Over 100 years old, this show is the largest and longest-running aerospace trade show in the world and the key event for the industry. www.siae.fr/EN Automation Technology Expo Canada Canada, Toronto 16-18 June 2015 Co-located with Design & Manufacturing Canada, Packex, PTX and Plast-Ex www.canontradeshows.com/expo/atx_ca13 Manufacturing Solutions Expo Singapore 30 September - 2 October 2015 The only exhibition in Singapore that aims to showcase the industry’s best ideas, innovative technologies and cost effective manufacturing solutions to meet the growing needs of manufacturing companies. Includes Singapore Pavilion. www.smfederation.org.sg/index.php/ calendar (click on September 30) EMO Italy, Milan 5-10 October 2015 Includes Metal forming/cutting machine tools, welding, automation,software, accessories, metrology, quality control, OHS. www.emo-milano.com

industry calendar local Australian Auto Aftermarket Exhibition Melbourne Exhibition Centre 16-18 April 2015 Auto parts, equipment, accessories tools www.aftermarketexpo.com.au Safety in Action Brisbane Exhibition & Convention Centre 22-23 April 2015 Dedicated workplace health & safety event www.safetyinaction.net.au/brisbane DesignBUILD Sydney Showground 28-30 April 2015 Australia’s largest and most comprehensive trade event for the domestic and international design and building industry. www.designbuildexpo.com.au CeMAT 5-7 May 2015 Sydney Olympic Park Materials handling and logistics exhibition, including materials handling, intralogistics and logistics solutions. Australia’s key players in the process manufacturing, retail and FMCG. www.cemat.com.au

market held in Australia. Concurrent show: The new Safety First Conference & Expo: Australia’s complete safety event: this will feature a dedicated B2B exhibition showcasing the latest technologies, products and services to improve WHS standards and compliance and reduce safety expenditure. Includes industry-leading Safety First conference where high-level speakers will deliver essential information for the protection of businesses from workplace safety hazards. www.amtil.com.au/Austech-Exhibition National Manufacturing Week Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre 26-29 May 2015 Fully integrated annual manufacturing exhibition showcasing the latest products and constantly evolving technologies in the expanding manufacturing market www.nationalmanufacturingweek.com.au

Australian Construction Equipment Expo Brisbane, Eagle Farm 14-16 May 2015 A broad spectrum of the latest equipment and innovations in the construction sector. http://aceexpo.com.au/queensland

Australian Energy Storage Conference & Exhibition Sydney, Australian Technology Park 3-4 June 2015 Deals with the energy storage industry at all levels – utilities, energy businesses, building management and the emerging electric vehicle markets. The expanded conference will incorporate ‘Lighting & Building Automation’ and ‘Emergent Business Technologies’ zones. www.australianenergystorage.com.au

Austech Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre 26-29 May 2015 Australia’s premier advanced precision manufacturing and machine tool exhibition.

The only show specifically targeted at the metalworking, machine tool and ancillary

Adelaide Boat Show Adelaide 25-28 June 2015 Showcase of vessels large and small, products and accessories, services and expert advice, seminars and workshops, holiday destinations and entertainment. www.kjex.com.au

Industrial Laser Impact Card 66-67 Advertiser Index Iscar 9 Alfex CNC 13 Machinery Forum 77 Amada Oceania 86-87 MAPAL 55 AMTIL AMT 12, 25 LMC Laser 88 AMTIL Austech 22-23, 71 MTI Qualos 31, 43 AMTIL Membership 83 OSG Asia Pty Ltd 4-5 Applied Machinery 17 Recruit Australia 61 BAC Systems 27 Seco Tools Cover Flap Bristow Laser Systems 15 Taegutec Australia 2-3 Complete Machine Tools 35 Techni Waterjet 47 Compressed Air Australia 19 Teco Tooling 33 DMG Mori 36-37 Walter AG Singapore 11 Hardman Brothers 10 Williamson Tool & Engineering 29 Hare & Forbes 7

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AMT April 2015

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Amada are introducing the new HG press brake. These are the top models in the Amada portfolio and are especially suitable for short runs. They ensure outstanding precision and operate at the highest process speeds available to date. The HG is packed with sophisticated technologies including a new NC controller giving us easier operation and shorter lead times.

Drive System - positioning accuracy of • Hybrid 0.001mm crowning adjusts during part processing • Active giving 0.25 deg accuracy along the bend length

Ask us about our offer on the remaining HDS machines in stock.

• New easy to use multi touch screen 3D control • Tool clamping options - S Grip, A Grip or Wila Axis backguage includes L-Shift for • Multi complex part gauging Amada Oceania Pty Ltd www.amada.com.au

SPECIALISING IN THE SPECIALISED “I have developed a respect for Amada equipment over the years.

It is extremely reliable and accurate.”

“Like any contract manufacturing business we are facing competitors out there waiting to get a slice of your business. The investment in Amada equipment will keep us ahead of our opposition by enabling us to reliably produce high quality, high precision metalwork on time.”

Stephen Honan, owner and founder of Hume, ACT-based HDM Metal

If you can imagine it, we can create it...

Whether perforated, laser-cut building facades, landscape features, balustrades or custom street furniture; ACT-based HDM Metal is committed to providing quality architectural and ornamental metalwork at every stage of the process, from design to installation.

“We try to specialise in the specialised,” says Stephen Honan, who founded the business in 2004 with a focus on the manufacture of electronic cabinets and commercial metalwork . Together with his business partner Rodney Skvorc, he has gradually grown HDM to a medium-sized manufacturing business with 30 employees and a 3,500-m² factory with modern CNC equipment.

Just like many fabricators in the architectural sheetmetal business HDM is faced with

short production runs, requiring short set-up times, efficient processes and of course the latest technology. Stephen and his team rely on Amada machinery – simply because it is reliable.

“I invested in Amada machinery because the business I started my career at, Precision Metals, had numerous Amada machines,” Stephen explains. “I developed a respect for the Amada equipment at the time; it was extremely reliable and accurate, the reliability of the gear was amazing. It rarely broke down, and if it did it was usually up and running again within no time.”

Today, HDM is running five machines from Amada Oceania: A guillotine, two press brakes, an AE2510 turret punch and an FOM23015RI laser cutter. Most recently, Stephen and Rodney have invested in an Amada HG2204 press brake. “We are not

a production business as such, we tend to do small runs, and so far we have found the HG2204 to be good for this,” Stephen explains. “The machine is quick to set up, which for us is very important.”

Of course, quality and precision are also essential for any business to have an edge over the competition. Designed for short runs and high productivity, the HG Series guarantees continuous, top-class accuracy.

The machines possess a high-precision press beam drive which ensures outstanding angular bending accuracy. Precise, uniform bending is guaranteed along the entire length of the press beam. “Our business is built around producing high quality and high precision metalwork, so for us high precision is most definitely important in remaining competitive and the leader in our region.”

“We invested in the HG 2204 for mainly three reasons.”

Reliability: It is an Amada machine.

Versatility: The bed size of 4 m and a folding pressure of 220 t give the sheetmetal business greater versatility: Quite often the company needs to fold parts longer than 3 m, requiring more than 100 t of pressure. The HG 2204 enables HDM to fold 6 mm steel plate over a distance of 3 m, which is often required.

FOM23015RI

Productivity: Fabricating a large array of items, HDM needs to perform multiple set-ups on the press brake on a daily basis. The touch screen CNC and the new “Bend CAM software” (Dr ABE Bend) along with the clip-in single V-tooling reduces set-up times, increasing throughput.

AMNC3i Controller

Sydney 02 8887 1100 Unit 7, 16 Lexington Dr., Bella Vista NSW 2153 Melbourne 03 9020 1400 Unit 1, 3-4 Anzed Court Mulgrave VIC 3170 | Perth | Brisbane

BySprint Fiber 6000 6.0 kW Fiber Laser cutting

Full lights out automation Automatic nozzle changing CutControl-cut quality monitoring ByPos Fiber-automatic focal control

Fast Efficient Profitable

Available in 3.0 x 1.5m or 4.0 x 2.0m www.bystronic.com

31-33 Sullivan Street Moorabbin Victoria 3189 Tel: (03) 9555 5525 Fax: (03) 9555 2970 Web: www.lmclaser.com.au Email: sales@lmclaser.com.au