Hey chat, my warehouse has some older somewhat bespoke packaging equipment for dry granular goods.

Is an anti-static ionizer fan a potential solution to neutralize the charge in those particles landing in the scoop? I could point it either along the small conveyor belt bringing the granules to the scoop, or at the scoop itself?

Someone recommended attaching a vibrator motor to the scoop and increasing the dumping speed.

But i think getting rid of static still is super valuable because the particles get stuck everywhere.

We use this machine for packing coconut shavings, poppy seeds, etc, and by the time they land in the scoop, they've picked up quite some charge. Then a person needs to brush off the remainder every time, making the process slow, and causing inconsistencies in packaged weight.

I've linked to a video I filmed to illustrate the mechanism. It's not from all angles but I hope it's good enough to get a gist. Welcome all input!

My company bought this press break a few months back, and it’s been a struggle for us to learn how to run it. Nobody has had the time to sit down and really work with it, but we’ve got a few big jobs coming up that we really need a proper program made for. Any help, or pointing in the right direction would be incredibly helpful. Northeast Florida, for anyone who may be wondering.

I wanted to manufacture plastic related products I know there will be demand for my products because they source these products from faraway places yet the demand is not fulfilled. I want to setup injection moiukding and mould and I have no clue where to start because none of the people in my circle do not have manufacturing setup, could someone point me in right direction

I’m in Los Angeles, Wondering if anyone recognizes them or their manufacturer. Considering piecing together one or two 3d printer filament extruders from the lot. Beautiful screws imo.

I'm a noob w.r.t manufacturing. I am into ERP implementation and customisation. I am currently working with a sheet metal stamping shop that dispatches 35k-40k volume of different parts per day. While looking at the consumption pattern in ERP i observed that for the shearing operation of 1 sheet the yield that the machine achieves on average is 60%. Many parts have a cutting layout that just achieves 50% yield. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole asking chatgpt how this can be increased. It suggested using a laser cutting machine to increase yield, even though the upfront cost for laser cutting machines is high they return on the capex investment by good yield so its investment can be covered at max in a year. I'm pretty sure the shop floor guys must be aware of laser cutting machines. Chatgpt suggested using fiber laser cutting machines for cutting layout and blanking patterns. Then why is it so that still shearing machines are used. The stamping shop is manually operated and has press machines from 350 to 160 tons. Explain the rationale behind it. I know the shearing machine costs far less in terms of upfront capex but it wastes so much material. The shop procures close to 100 ton of material every month so I assume 40 tons is scrap. Why is it so. My engineer brain can't process it I'm too afraid to ask .

Material: CR and HR standard sheets 1250mm x 2500mm. Thickness ranges from 0.7mm to 6mm. Small automobile parts

Having a problem with our DoAll saw. When starting a cut, the blade will turn on and the saw will begin to lower, then it will cut out and display the "no running--check blade" error message. I'm assuming it's a dirty sensor somewhere any advice on locating that sensor would be appreciated

I’m new to the industry and I’m going in as an operator and would love some advice!

I get the fundamentals of being a rookie. Don’t be afraid to ask all the questions and repeat questions. Use your head when staying safe.

Coming from a more office type career I was just wondering if there’s any more nuances that would be new to me with this more hands on type career.

Does IoT really solving problems in manufacturing? or IoT is just hyped, with no real application that solves specific problems?

I'm asking this because I starting a project and wonder if the IoT space particularly in manufacturing really is important.

Like many , I’ve always thought about my own machine shop. My first job at 15 was cleaning chips out of Bridgeports and it’s just never left me. The last few years, I have been targeting going out on my own 8 years from now but really feeling like the time maybe much sooner than that.

In ~30 years I have had quite a few roles. I have great relationships with my team, strong relationships with customers and I think I know this business.

I believe I could fill every hour of every spindle I could buy.

Tell me what I don’t know or push me over the edge guys!

We use NdFeB magnets across a few product lines, motors and sensor assemblies mostly. Since China's export licensing regime came in, anything with the high coercivity grades, the SH and UH suffix stuff with dysprosium or terbium in it, has become a paperwork exercise. End use declarations, application details, the works. Quoted lead times that used to be weeks are now "depends on the licence."

Purchasing wants engineering to "just design it out." Which sounds great until you look at the options. Ferrite means roughly ten times the volume for the same field, so the whole package grows. Lower grade NdFeB without the heavy rare earths works on paper but our operating temps are right at the edge of what N-grades handle. And SmCo isn't an escape route because samarium is on the same control list.

So genuine question for anyone who's been through this: did you requalify a design around ferrite or a lower grade, did you find non-Chinese magnet supply that actually delivers, or did you just build inventory and hope the politics settle? Feels like everyone's talking about this and nobody's actually done it.

Hello, looking for advice on the best way to learn how to take apart and put back together a gearbox in an hour a week from now. This is for an interview I have for a production technician role. Thanks.

I bought a pneumatic injection molding and i received it yesterday. I am stumped on the air fitting and finding a coupler to hook to my air compressor. Closest thing i could find is this on amazon Japan and Australia but cant be shipped to America. https://www.amazon.com.au/KENOH-Coil-Hose-Coupler-16-4/dp/B00N3NBFW8?th=1

Any help would greatly appreciated before i just use a barbed fitting.

I'm losing my mind on this one. I know it can be done but I'm trying to avoid designing custom fixtures for a small motor that would hold a die grinder cutting disc.

All I need is something like a die grinder or Dremel that can be easily mounted. Does this exist? Or a motor that I can easily mount.

I have some 1" diameter x .023" thick Silicon cut-off discs that I can put on our Dremel. I could go design and build a custom table mount for the Dremel but I really don't have the time for that on this project. I would prefer something similar with a square base or premade mounting holes, then we will use a guided linear rail to bring up our fixtured part for a precise cut.

This is very specific, but if you have any ideas I could use some help. Thank you!

I have this copper baseplate and heatsink and I'd like to weld them together with indium foil in between. I tried with a torch till the indium melted but after it cooled down, the bond was weak and I was able to separate them easily. What did I do wrong? Thank you! 

I was hoping to get some opinions from y’all on potential MES systems that would fit my use case. I have been exploring Tulip but after reading some concerning feedback I was hoping someone here could point me in a better direction.

## Current state:

• We are a medium volume mix model, engineered to order facility that manufactures tight tolerance products for a regulated industry

• Our process would be considered semi-continuous manufacturing: we load up a unit on a machine, take a beginning sample and an end sample when the unit is complete. Problems can occur in the middle of a run, despite a successful beginning sample so moving towards digital in-process monitoring and real time alerts would significantly reduce scrap

• We are using IQMS as an ERP, have 100+ users and multiple transactions are clocked every minute across the facility 

• We have extensive in-process inspection forms that are filled out by unit for each work order (average \~10 units / work order)

• Lot traceability is important, and lot splitting occurs on every single work order

• Each of these in process forms is on paper, and we have a different form per main process step per lot so paperwork can easily get cluttered and must be physically transported separately from the material

• We are starting to bring in-line inspection sensors online on our key pieces of equipment, but this data is not currently tied into any system

## Targeted Near Term Future state:

• The MES digitizes the in-process inspection forms and helps pre-populate the templates with either ERP pulled tolerances or tolerances loaded by engineering

◦ If an operator was to input data that is outside of the specified tolerances, the data would get flagged with an alert that is sent to Quality / ENGR / Production leaders. We do not need to have a digital NCMR process, but a flag for investigation would be great

• The software helps tie in-line inspection data to the unit that was running on the machine and flags if there is an issue mid process

• Work Instructions for each step are digitally displayed, with quality alerts flagged at each step as necessary

## Targeted Long Term:

• ERP production milestone transactions are confirmed in the MES and pushed to IQMS, and can only be processed if in process inspection forms are completely filled out with correct, in tolerance information

• Tooling data is stored in the MES so we can start predicting life per tool, and see if we have any tooling shortages for upcoming jobs based off prescribed tooling in the MES router

• Tooling attributes are stored by work order by unit so we can correlate attributes of the tooling with yield rates for jobs (this size of tooling for first pass results in lower yield on step 5)

• In process inspection forms are tied to digital measuring devices that input data

• We have digital displays on each piece of equipment showing which products we are running, if an operator tries to scan a tag for an operation that cannot run on that piece of equipment (they accidentally advance it to step 3 instead of step 2) this display flags the scan and provides an error with an alert to supervisors

• We would want the equipment to not be able to turn on unless a correct tag is scanned, and for any process that has a machining program the operator would be forced to scan a lot tag to upload the program

I plan to open a small plant to produce razor blades. Anyone know what machines needed and how to find these machines?

We have a freezer which stores 3 different sized boxes on pallets. The larger box can have 2 different items. The medium and small box has only single item.

Is there anyway to have an inventory count in the freezer using any machinery? I looked into computer vision cameras but it’s expensive and we would need multiple set up per freezer because field of view is not wide. And it is 2D so it needs to look from top and sideways to get an approximate number of boxes on each palette.

We were thinking maybe we can put it outside the freezer so when items entering on pallet jacks it could count it could recognize it and count it as it enters and exits but they said workers need to pause to get a photo in order for the camera to recognize and try to get the count.

Is there any other method to do this? we don’t want to use rfid because that’s an ongoing because we would need to apply it to each box.

Is there any other way to put up some sensors in the freezer to get an automatic inventory count so we don’t need to go in and out and count it ourselves everyday.

I manage a medium sized locally owned manufacturing facility.

We are looking for reasonably easy ways to produce color inventory labels. Meaning, a color picture of the inventory item. Screws, nuts, hinges, etc.

I know I can do this with Avery label software online and print on a color laser, that's what I'm currently doing.

However I would prefer a way to print a single label if needed and I'm looking for the quickest way to go from "photo/jpg" to printed label.

We do not need a high volume of labels daily but I do need a good quality resolution similar to what a laser can do.

Any suggestions on label making software and label printers?

Label size ideally is 4" wide (to make 4x2, 4x4, 4x6 labels)

Hello i want to know something.

I am looking für an Enclosure air conditioner for my company. I need IP 54 or above because i work in the paper industry and the Enclosure air conditioner we have at this time are not made for our industry because of the dust.

I somebody also working in the paper industry and had the same problem.

I have already looked at thermoelectric enclosure air conditioner but i think these are to small and weak for our big control cabinets.

So please let me know