During a recent conference session on AI and manufacturing in Las Vegas, one presenter made a valid point about simplifying and accelerating shop floor processes. “AI has the potential to revolutionize the way companies design, develop, manufacture and operate.” This is happening in gear manufacturing shops, automotive OEMs, production plants—even mining facilities.

Engineers Assemble. If you’re a product engineer in charge of designing the latest and greatest manufacturing creations, it’s officially “Tony Stark” time. If Philip K. Dick is more your speed over the Marvel Cinematic Universe, than how about “Tom Cruise” time in Minority Report? Siemens and Sony recently introduced a solution that combines the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio with Sony’s new XR head-mounted display (HMD), SRH-S1—designed using Siemens’ own NX software—insert chicken vs. egg debate here.

Pi Day took place on March 14, 2024. Our friendly neighborhood constant is used in engineering to determine the dimensions of gears, wheels, and pipes. Pi is also used in computer science to generate random numbers for cryptography, simulation, and gaming. With a tip of the cap to math enthusiasts, we offer a quick cheat sheet to pi and its fascinating history.

I grew up playing video games in the 1980s/1990s. Today, my kids not only play video games, but could discuss coding, designing, and marketing at length on their YouTube channel. This generation is growing up with technology no other generation has ever had.

A deep dive into the world of gear dynamics and gear noise has led many a mechanical engineer to Columbus, OH in search of the methods by which gear noise is measured and predicted as well as the techniques employed in gear noise and vibration reduction. Over the past 40+ years, about 2,550 engineers and technicians from 385+ companies have attended the Gear Dynamics and Gear Noise Short Course at The Ohio State University.

At the Motion + Power Technology Expo in Detroit, I had the privilege to sit and discuss workforce development challenges with Kris Ward, senior director, strategy, and business development at SME, Kika Young, president, Forest City Gear, Mary Ellen Doran, director, emerging technology and executive director for the AGMA Foundation and Megan Schrauben, executive director, MiSTEM Network. The following is an edited transcript of this panel discussion. (Special thanks to Forest City Gear for sponsoring this live event.)

The EV to-do list grows daily. Once the engineer has settled in on solving noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) challenges, they pivot toward energy efficiency. They consider the vehicle’s weight, the tooling needed to manufacture the gears, the skiving needed to make the surface finishes as smooth as possible.

We came across an interesting statistic recently in our normal product coverage for Gear Technology magazine. United Grinding had more than 2,500 remote deployments during the pandemic. Digital assistance systems—big and small—helped machine operators navigate production output in real time during this chaotic work period.

The manufacturing version of Indiana Jones is much more interested in lithium, cobalt, and nickel than arks, grails or “Dials of Destiny.” So much so that the current administration is doing its part to keep up with China in the dramatic supply chain cold war taking place across the globe. We’ve all read and reread the headlines, electrification is imminent for our carbon-neutral future—the path toward electrification, however, is quite complicated.

Can a technophile 3D-print a giant replica from the new Transformers film? Of course—it’s 2023 and additive manufacturing is enabling engineers to test manufacturing material boundaries daily.