Challenging the elements and pushing the boundaries of the physically possible, the oil and gas industry is a tough, competitive business that requires near-zero tolerances and equally tough, never-let-you-down products.
Article by MasterFluid.
A truly global industry, oil and gas upstream exploration and production takes place on all seven continents, major oceans, and deepest seas worldwide. It is a driving force of the global economy. The exploration and production pressures and temperatures are intense, the stakes are high, and error can be catastrophic. Premium pipes, seals, valves, wellheads, couplings, and connectors are essential. Dependable metalworking fluids ensure manufacturers can compete in the highly competitive arena of the oil and gas business to produce 100% reliable pipes and dependable parts efficiently and profitably.
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Innovative solutions are the driving force for the continuous creation of added value. In this respect the cooperation between science and industry plays a central role. A good example is the cooperation of the research department technological planning and grinding technologies at the machine tool institute WZL at the RWTH Aachen university (Germany) with the Rösler Oberflächentechnik in the field of mass finishing.
The RWTH Aachen is one of the 11 German universities that are recognised as “universities of excellence”. For decades the machine tool institute, one of the largest and oldest establishments at the Aachen university, has been a globally recognised beacon for future-focused research in the field of manufacturing technologies. One reason for this success has been the close cooperation between the four academic sectors “measuring technologies in manufacturing”, “quality management”, “manufacturing systems” and “manufacturing and machine tool technologies” combined with a balanced mix of basic and practical research.
Marius Ohlert, project manager for grinding technologies in the field technology planning and grinding methods, that is integrated in the academic sector manufacturing technologies, comments: “Through the close cooperation with a variety of industrial companies we make sure that our research projects are based on industrial needs and that the results can be quickly transformed into practical results”.
The mass finishing technology is a widely used system for all kinds of surface refinement tasks such as deburring, edge radiusing, surface smoothing, polishing, descaling and de-rusting. Despite the importance of this technology for many industries most mass finishing processes are still based on the knowhow of experienced experts. Mr. Ohlert describes one research goal as follows: “With our basic research we want to achieve that mass finishing processes are knowledge-based, thus allowing a quicker, more efficient and goal-oriented process development. For this purpose, we study in detail the physical effects of the various mass finishing methods”.
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The wide range of milling discs, special techniques when milling by hand, as well as the use with hand angle millers and in (partially) automated processes. The milling discs are available in the three different kinds “milling disc”, “double sided milling disc” and “doubleworker”, which aim different areas of application.
For all of those the following applies:
The surfaces processed with the discs are metallic bright, and therefore prevent cavities while welding. While working, the discs produce neither (unhealthy) dust nor heat, and thus no structural changes that come with heat. The amount of material removed and the fineness of the result depend on the toothing. The fewer teeth, the coarser the chips and the greater the amount of material removed. The more teeth a disc has, the finer the chips and the smoother the surface, but less material is removed. The specific toothing depends on the material to be machined and the disc size.
The discs can be used for the following tasks:
Maija-Frästechnik GmbH, founded in 2012, develops, produces and sells high-quality milling tools made of hard metal. The company owns the patent for milling discs, which was registered in 2000 by the later company founder.
When asked which of the traditional five senses they would most regret not having, human beings generally choose sight. Is the same true for industrial equipment? In this article, John Young of EU Automation looks at some of the latest trends in machine vision in metalworking.
The global machine vision market is worth approximately $9.6 billion and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.1 percent over the next five years, according to research by MarketsandMarkets. In the APAC region, demand is being boosted by manufacturers turning to artificial intelligence (AI), Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), all of which benefit from machine vision capabilities.
Definitions of machine vision vary, but most involve the idea of using technology to extract information from images on an automated basis. Machine vision does not refer to a single piece of technology, but rather to multiple technologies, hardware, software and integrated systems.
Deployed in the right way, machine vision can help automate the repetitive and dull tasks traditionally carried out by human workers. For example, sorting parts on a conveyor by colour. Machine vision allows these jobs to be performed at higher speed and with greater consistency, resulting in more efficient quality control, reduced waste and higher yields for manufacturers.
Machine vision technology has been used in manufacturing applications since the 1980s, but there have been barriers to more widespread adoption. Traditionally, perhaps the two key difficulties for manufacturers contemplating adopting machine vision have been cost and the difficulty of installation. As well as being prohibitively expensive in many instances, the equipment often needed a trained and specialized system integrator to set it up.
The latest generation of machine vision technology has gone a long way towards solving these dilemmas by providing systems that are vastly less expensive and much quicker and easier to install. Furthermore, while some machine vision systems might have required hours of ‘training’, which involves feeding images of defective and non-defective parts to the system to allow it to improve its identification capacity, modern technology incorporates machine learning algorithms. This introduces a substantial level of automation into the process.
Another traditional hurdle for the adoption of machine vision in quality control has been the complexity of identifying defects. Take aluminium as an example. Distinguishing between genuine defect and an appropriate level of variation in this alloy is more difficult because of variations in colour and other properties of the material. Many manufacturers would persist with manual inspection, even when inspection errors were made in a quarter of all cases.
Today, machine vision technology is sophisticated enough to make it a commercially viable alternative to human inspection even in more difficult scenarios such as these. Although well-suited to inspection and quality control, modern machine vision systems are multi-purpose and multifunctional. Machine vision can simultaneously offer other benefits like checking OCR codes or monitoring factory equipment as part of a predictive maintenance program.
Automation in metalworking is growing and this growth is strongest in the APAC region. Cobots, or collaborative robots that can work safely alongside human workers, are a good example of this. Cobots are a key area of development in metalworking and are finding new uses in applications like welding, assembly and sorting.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on the global manufacturing supply chain. For instance, factory shutdowns have drastically impacted the metalworking supply chain around the car and auto parts manufacturing industries. While the medical equipment sector is experiencing massive demand, the grounding of airline fleets is expected to put a dent in the MRO industry—at least those segments involving metalworks.
In line with our continuing coverage of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, we at Asia Pacific Metalworking Equipment News (APMEN) are conducting the following brief survey regarding the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak to your business. Your participation in this survey is greatly appreciated and will help ensure we are providing you and the industry with the best content possible.
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Asia Pacific Metalworking Equipment News sat down with Jeff Boyd of Sutton Tools to talk about trends and opportunities in the cutting tools market, and some of the product innovations at the company. Article by Stephen Las Marias.
Established in 1917, Sutton Tools is a family owned company manufacturing cutting tools for the metal cutting industry. The company supplies tools to end-user markets including automotive, medical, mining, power generation, aerospace, defence, and the oil and gas industries. Founded by William Henry Sutton, the company is currently managed by the fourth-generation Sutton family.
At the recent EMO Hannover 2019 trade fair in Germany, Asia Pacific Metalworking Equipment News sat down with Jeff Boyd, export manager at Sutton Tools, to talk about trends and opportunities in the cutting tools market, and some of the product innovations at the company.
Tells us about yourself and your role in the company.
Jeff Boyd (JB): I have a background in product engineering and technical R&D. That kind of matured into a more of a technical role in the field. In 2011, I headed up to Singapore, where I ran the company’s operation and distribution centre. I was there for nearly five years, running the Asian markets. Currently, my role is to support our teams globally, and bring the necessary market information back to our head office to support our production facility.
We offer a wide range of solutions for the metal cutting industry. We have a division in Europe, based in the Netherlands, which supplies the European region; and then from our Melbourne, Australia headquarters, we are very focused on the Asian market, where we supply various engineered cutting tools, to increase the end-users’ productivity. We have salespeople located in all the major markets in Europe and Asia. And for a company our size, that’s probably where we mainly focus on. In these markets, we have a particular focus on aerospace machining of difficult high strength materials and automotive tapping.
What challenges are you seeing in the industry?
JB: Every market has a different challenge. If I bring it down to one thing, it is finding the right people in those markets. People that are engaged in the market, and have very good relationships, because, we know we have a very good, very stable product at a competitive price and the right quality. But at the end of the day, you really need the right people that you can trust to be able to really find the right solution to offer the customer, to bring the benefit to the customer; to bring these products to them.
What opportunities are you seeing in southeast asia?
JB: I would say Southeast Asia has a very strong aerospace/aviation market. Our experiences and successes in the machining of titaniums and Inconels, particularly in the French aerospace markets over the past few years, have allowed us to leverage this knowledge and open up a number of new opportunities for Sutton Tools in Southeast Asia. That said, automotive tapping applications in Thailand and Indonesia is also of particular interest, when it comes to thread forming of forged steel components.
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What can you say about e-mobility?
JB: We have a number of customers, particularly in China, for electric vehicles (EVs), and, you know, a lot of materials there are silicon-based aluminium. We have very good solutions for producing threads when it comes to forming taps for those materials. As the internal combustion engine is seeing a demise, we are focusing on EVs, and diversifying our offer; focusing from an engineering point of view on those materials necessary to produce the electric vehicles.
What products are you highlighting here at the show?
JB: We are highlighting industry-based solutions here, so we have a program for super alloy materials for the aerospace industry. In terms of machining, we have a very good carbide grade and geometry ideal for high metal removal rates with dynamic type machining strategies. We have done a lot of independent testing with our tools, and we have about three sales guys in south of France supporting the market there for the subcontractors to Airbus, which is really seeing a lot of growth in the market, particularly this year. That’s a very important area for this exhibition for us.
But we are also showcasing some new products ready for 2020. We’ve recently purchased some new equipment to produce extra-long series carbides drills. We’re releasing a range of 15xD, 20xD and 30xD carbide drills in 2020, as well as a lot of our taps for automotive tapping applications.
The cutting tools market is very competitive. what makes your products unique in the market?
JB: Sutton Tools is flexible in the way we go about our business. We really like to work with the customers, and the end-users. We are very focused on talking to the end user, understanding what their challenges are, and we try to be flexible enough to offer a solution in that way.
You mentioned you were in philippines recently. what are the opportunities you are seeing in that market?
JB: I was in the Philippines for the PDMEX 2019 event, to support our distributor there. We have a couple of aerospace customers and a few automotive customers in the Philippines. It is kind of similar, the aerospace companies based there are very much machining exotic materials including titanium; and we have a very good relationship with them for many years. There are also quite a few automotive customers, again for tapping. And they are our two strengths, really. We like to do things really well, and we put a lot of our resources into supporting the brand.
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