Fast, Cheap, Good Quality is Possible
This week: Made in America profitably at $12.98, race to 1,000 parts with 3D printing, getting digital to improve the business, AI augmenting PLM, self-assembling electronics. Podcast and Paid launch!
Shop Talk
Capturing this week's zeitgeist
Exciting news! This past week I launched "Machine Chatter," an AI-generated podcast that brings you inside the world of modern manufacturing and supply chains. Each episode will feature the most engaging media from the weekly digest and augmenting it with the full backstory of that technology, providing you another way to consume Exponential Industry. It is also available on Spotify and soon on YouTube and Apple Podcasts. Most of you will need to manually subscribe to it on Substack since I did not auto subscribe you. Check out the first episode below 👇
But wait, there’s more! I'm also introducing a paid tier that includes bonus weekly content - carefully curated reads that didn't make the main digest. Your subscription helps keep this publication going while ensuring you get the full manufacturing technology landscape. I appreciate you being part of this community!
Assembly Line
This week's most influential Industry 4.0 media.
👕 How a $12.98 T-Shirt Is Made in America—at a Profit
✍️ Author: Suzanne Kapner
But it wasn’t tariffs that made the $12.98 shirt economically feasible, says Bayard Winthrop, the chief executive and founder of American Giant, the U.S. apparel company producing them. It was Walmart’s heft—and guaranteed orders. Winthrop said that without Walmart acting as a backstop by committing to buy a predetermined number of shirts over time, American Giant’s suppliers wouldn’t have had the confidence to make the investments in automation and other upgrades that drove down production costs.
Unlike some other industries that have become highly mechanized, there are limits to automation in apparel. For the most part, fabric is still sewn by humans. To fulfill Walmart’s order for hundreds of thousands of shirts, American Giant and its partners hired 75 people to staff the Los Angeles sewing facility. The company and its suppliers also spent $1 million on machinery designed to make production faster and more efficient. It also tweaked the design.
Read more at WSJ
🇺🇸 Making it in America:
Community colleges gear up to train workers for America’s proposed manufacturing future [YouTube]
⭐ “TSMC worries about earthquakes. Intel once traced a lithography issue back to another kind of rumble—a shift in wind patterns that was carrying over methane gas from nearby dairy farms.” [WSJ]
Micron Technology plans $2.2B Virginia plant expansion [Manufacturing Dive]
Boeing Adds More Surprise Quality Checks in Its Factories [WSJ]
🖨️3️⃣ Race to 1,000 Parts: 3D Printing vs. Injection Molding
⭐ HP’s 3D Print division is leading the charge with a transformative initiative: sharing near real-time equipment telemetry data with their customers that use 3D Printers as part of their own manufacturing process. [Databricks]
KIIT Develops AI Module to Enhance 3D Printing Defect Detection [AM Chronicle]
Chinese Researchers Unveil 3D Printed Vortex Beam Generator [3DPrinting.com]
⚗️ Improve Ethylene Production Margins with Digitalization
✍️ Author: Ana Khanlari
🏢 Organizations: AspenTech
On the environmental front, many ethylene producers have committed to curb emissions by 2030 and 2050 milestones. Such avenues for decarbonization include large-scale electrically heated steam cracker furnaces, such as the one currently under construction at BASF’s Ludwigshafen Verbund site in Germany. Circularity via the mechanical and chemical recycling of waste plastics is another priority for the industry. Renewable plastics (derived from bio-based feedstock or recycled pyrolysis gas) have a lower carbon footprint than ethylene produced in the traditional steam-cracking process. Even though in the short term, the demand for virgin feedstock may not change, in the long-term, product circularity will lower the need for traditional fossil-based feedstock.
Read more at Chemical Engineering
📟 Let’s get digital, digital… let me hear your machines talk, your machines talk:
Woodward Sets Up the Building Blocks for a Digital Factory [MMS]
Gemcor Production Solutions Delivers Advanced Factory Integration [Industrial Machinery Digest]
Tech-Clarity and MESA International are researching manufacturers' strategies, plans, and approaches to gaining value from performance metrics, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI). [Survey Link]
🧠 How AI is Augmenting the PLM Process
This AI shoe scans to fit you perfectly [YouTube]
Researchers Demonstrate Self-Assembling Electronics
✍️ Author: Matt Shipman
Researchers have demonstrated a new technique for self-assembling electronic devices. The proof-of-concept work was used to create diodes and transistors, and paves the way for self-assembling more complex electronic devices without relying on existing computer chip manufacturing techniques.
“Existing chip manufacturing techniques involve many steps and rely on extremely complex technologies, making the process costly and time consuming,” says Martin Thuo, corresponding author of a paper on the work and a professor of materials science and engineering at North Carolina State University. “Our self-assembling approach is significantly faster and less expensive. We’ve also demonstrated that we can use the process to tune the bandgap for semiconductor materials and to make the materials responsive to light – meaning this technique can be used to create optoelectronic devices.
Read more at NC State News
💿 Materializing smaller chips:
TSMC Advances in Silicon Photonics with integration of Co-packaged Optics: Broadcom and NVIDIA Set to Be First Customers [TrendForce]
HKUST has developed a Deep-UV MicroLED Arrays for Maskless Semiconductor Manufacturing [AZoOptics]
New Product Introduction
Highlighting new and innovative facilities, processes, products, and services
Novel welding tech demonstration draws industry representatives
✍️ Author: Robert Colman
On Oct. 25, Brampton, Ontario-based SORSYS Technologies hosted a demonstration of FuseRing’s induction-assisted friction welding technology on tube and rod materials. This demonstration of the FuseRing technology showed attendees a model that could heat the material in two seconds, but also could have its temperature settings changed, as well as the pressure and angle of the material. The FuseRing concept uses solid-state fusion to join sections of pipe. The inventor of the welding process, Canadian David Lingnau, described it as a “spinduction” process—combining induction heating and kinetic energy to join two workpieces without the filler metals or solid-to-liquid phase transformation. Essentially, the process involves using an induction heating coil to preheat the ends of two tubes or pipes. The operator then retracts the coil and compresses the ends, and then rotates one of the two pipes. The technique uses no filler and produces no fumes or particulates.
Paul Cheng, principal of FuseRing, noted that a wide variety of materials are suitable for this form of welding, and his focus has been on promoting it to industry sectors that struggle with time constraints and safety concerns, such as pipeline, refinery, nuclear, shipbuilding, and submarine.
Read more at The Fabricator
🧠🤖 Robot Era unveils groundbreaking ERA-42 model, ushering in a new era of general-purpose robotics
🦾🤖🦿 Finding a humanoid companion in business:
Samsung Electronics To Become Largest Shareholder in Rainbow Robotics Accelerating Future Robot Development [Samsung]
Figure AI ships Figure 02 humanoid robots to a paying customer [Robot Report]
Nvidia bets on robotics to drive future growth [Financial Times] while some opine the “march of the humanoids still has some way to go” [Financial Times]
Founder and CEO of Smart Robotics ponders, “Can humanoid robots solve problems in warehousing?” [Robotics and Automation News]
Introduction to Bearings in Humanoid Robots for Roboticists [MachineDesign]
Business Transactions
This week's top funding events, acquisitions, and partnerships across industrial value chains.
🇺🇸 Mining startup KoBold Metals valued at $2.96bn after closing $537m Series C
🔖 Topics: Funding Event
To ring in the new year, KoBold announced the close of its $537m Series C in an interview with the Financial Times. KoBold Metals said its series C funding round valued the company at $2.96bn, and was co-led by existing investor T Rowe Price, which has been joined by Durable Capital Partners.
The company — which uses OpenAI’s generative AI technology as well as more traditional AI — planned to “add at least three jurisdictions” including Finland and Botswana, House said, adding that he was excited about the prospects for lithium mining in Canada.
Read more at KoBold
⛏️ Striking gold:
🇧🇪 Swave Photonics Raises €27M ($28.27M) Series A Funding for Introduction of Dynamic 3D Holographic Display Products
Swave Photonics, the true holographic display company, announced the close of its €27M ($28.27M) Series A funding round. This significant investment in Swave will catalyze the advancement of its Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) platform, enabling a reality-first user experience for AI-powered augmented reality (AR) smartglasses and heads-up displays. The funding round was co-led by investors imec.xpand and SFPIM Relaunch, with participation from new investors EIC Fund, IAG Capital Partners, and Murata Electronics North America, Inc., as well as existing investors Qbic Fund, PMV, imec, and Luminate.
Read more at Business Wire
👓 Augmenting the future:
NVIDIA files a patent for AI glasses [Tweaktown]
🇺🇸🇸🇰 Zebra Technologies to Acquire Photoneo, Expanding Its Portfolio of 3D Machine Vision Solutions
Zebra Technologies (NASDAQ: ZBRA), a leading digital solution provider enabling businesses to intelligently connect data, assets, and people, announced it intends to acquire Photoneo, a leading developer and manufacturer of 3D machine vision solutions. The 3D segment of the Machine Vision market is the fastest growing, and this acquisition will further accelerate Zebra’s presence in the category.
Photoneo’s intelligent sensors are particularly effective within the vision-guided robotic (VGR) segment. They are certified to interface with many of the largest robotic manufacturers for a variety of use cases including robot-arm applications for bin picking. Photoneo differentiates itself through parallel structured light technology in complex 3D applications which provides a faster, more accurate, higher resolution and more robust solution comprised of both hardware and software.
Read more at PR Newswire
🇺🇸🇮🇹 One Equity Partners Completes Investment in Comau, an Italian Industrial Automation Leader
One Equity Partners, a middle market private equity firm, announced that it has completed a majority investment in Comau S.p.A., making Stellantis an active minority shareholder. Comau is a global technology company specializing in industrial automation and advanced robotics.
Read more at Business Wire
🇺🇸 Velo3D Announces Debt for Equity Exchange Transaction Significantly Delevers Balance Sheet Arrayed Notes Acquisition Corp to Become Majority Equity Holder of Velo3D
With the completion of this transaction, the Arrayed will hold 95% of Velo3D’s issued and outstanding common stock. Shares of Velo3D’s issued and outstanding common stock not held by the Holder will remain publicly traded on OTCQX.
“Velo3D’s industry leading technology and capabilities allow Arrayed Additive to greatly expand our services and product offering to our customers. Velo3D’s focus on defense, space / aerospace and technology end-markets is complementary to Arrayed Additive’s customer base and our leading technology in light weight precision manufacturing using magnesium and aluminum alloy further expands Velo3D’s capabilities. I am thrilled to lead Velo3D into a new chapter of growth,” said Arun Jeldi, Arrayed Additive CEO.
Read more at PR Newswire
Adding to the 🖨️ kerfuffle: