Hitachi Construction Machinery Co. Ltd and its consolidated subsidiary, Wenco International Mining Systems Ltd have jointly developed ConSite Mine, which helps resolve problems at mine sites by remotely monitoring mining machines on 24/7 basis through the use of Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) based analysis of equipment operations data. Hitachi Construction Machinery has developed this technology to help customers and Hitachi Construction Machinery dealers predict costly maintenance issues before they occur, such as the occurrence of cracks in and excavator boom or arm by utilising machine learning and applied analysis technologies. Currently, Hitachi Construction Machinery Group is piloting the technology in Australia, Zambia and Indonesia. The system will be further modified based on customer feedback before wider commercial release in 2021. ConSite Mine will enable the maintenance professionals for customers and Hitachi Construction Machinery dealers to monitor equipment health in real time and anticipate issues before they occur.

The integration of AI and 3D printing in manufacturing can help increase unit production rate, detect defects, and provide real-time control over the manufacturing process. As the name suggests, additive manufacturing is a method of building products by adding layers of components on one another. AI, on the other hand, as everyone knows, can automate monotonous tasks and bring accuracy in those tasks. The manufacturing sector has many repetitive labor tasks that make AI a perfect match for the manufacturing and 3D printing process.. AI can increase the production rate and accuracy of 3D production. Using computer vision, manufacturers can reverse engineer the existing models and create a new and improved product design.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes offer unique capabilities to build low-volume parts with complex geometries and fast prototyping from a variety of materials. Metal-based AM has become increasingly more popular over the last decade for manufacturing and repairing functional parts in automotive, medical and aerospace industries. Despite the great potential in metal-based AM market, the state-of-the-art practices involve rigorous trial and errors before achieving consistent parts with the desired geometric and material properties, which is mainly due to the sensitivity of the build on process parameters. While the influence of process parameters such as laser power, powder parameters, and scan speed on the microstructure and final properties of the AM build are extensively studied in the literature, the influence of toolpath strategies yet to be fully investigated. Authors in [Steuben et al., 2016] considered three different toolpath patterns for building a part using a fused deposition modeling process and demonstrated that the pattern has a significant effect on the ultimate strength and elastic modulus of the build. Akram et al. [Akram et al., 2018] formulated a microstructure model using a Cellular Automata (CA) and demonstrated a strong correlation between the toolpath pattern (i.e., unidirectional and bidirectional) and the grain orientations.

In this installment of the AI in Supply Chain series (#AIinSupplyChain), we explore the topic of industrial supply chains and factories of the future since this is where the AI applications we are covering will primarily be used. According to the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, "Industrie 4.0 refers to the intelligent networking of machines and processes for industry with the help of information and communication technology." Industrie 4.0 is a term that is closely related to the terms Factory of the Future and Fourth Industrial Revolution. Industrie 4.0 envisions a future in which: Factories produce goods in fluctuating quantities based on real-time demand rather than preset production quotas. Production lines are modularized and can be reconfigured easily to enable the production of different types of products in small lots.

A US technology company is 3D-printing futuristic holiday homes starting from $100,000 (£75,000) that fit in a back garden. Mighty Buildings, based in Oakland, California, says it can manufacture a 350 square-foot studio unit in less than 24 hours, providing owners a peaceful hideaway or a holiday cabin to accommodate guests. The firm is offering a variety of units on its website, ranging from a dinky studio to a luxury family home, which are printed with liquid synthetic stone that hardens almost instantly. The buildings are constructed at the company's facilities, transported to the customer's property on a truck and placed in a back garden with a massive crane. Units could also be leased out by property owners to help tackle the housing crisis, or big companies could also buy them to house employees while they're looking for something more long-term.

It is sure now, Artificial Intelligence is part of our future and already allowing to create really advanced devices. But do you know that the 3D printing technology can also make the most of AI? 3D printing is a game-changing technology, constantly evolving and finding new ways to improve itself. It now includes new amazing technologies like Artificial Intelligence. This combination of Artificial Intelligence and 3D printing could lead to new amazing applications of the additive manufacturing technology. Find all the answers to your questions in this blog post.

Humans are innately capable of performing complex movements with their hands via the articulation of their endoskeletal structure. These movements are made possible by ligaments and tendons that are elastically connected to a fairly rigid bone structure. Researchers at University of California- Santa Cruz and Ritsumeikan University in Japan have recently designed and fabricated a robotic finger inspired by the human endoskeletal structure. This biomimetic robotic finger, presented at this year's International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI), was assembled using a multi-material 3-D printer. "Developing a robotic hand that has hard and soft components, just like the human hand, is a research topic that I wanted to explore for years," Maryam Tebyani, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore.

Organoids 3D printing has quickly become one of the leading segments of the 3D printing industry in terms of innovation. Until recently, the market was primarily focused on North America, however many companies, laboratories, and universities around the world are exploring this field as well. Thanks to 3D printing techniques, cells and biomaterials can be combined and deposited layer by layer to create biomedical developments that have the same properties as living tissues. During this process, various bio-links can be used to create these tissue-like structures, which have applications in the fields of medical and tissue engineering. Of course, it is more than knowing that the goal of all these developments is to successfully bioprint a fully functional human organ.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is behind the development of a new type of artificial intelligence (AI) software called Peregrine, meant to improve the quality of functional parts being produced via powder bed 3D printers. Peregrine requires no "expensive characterization equipment," yet possesses the ability to evaluate parts during manufacturing. "Capturing that information creates a digital'clone' for each part, providing a trove of data from the raw material to the operational component," said Vincent Paquit, leader of advanced manufacturing data analytics research as part of ORNL's Imaging, Signals and Machine Learning group. "We then use that data to qualify the part and to inform future builds across multiple part geometries and with multiple materials, achieving new levels of automation and manufacturing quality assurance." Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher Chase Joslin uses Peregrine software to monitor and analyze a component being 3D printed at the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at ORNL (Image: Luke Scime, ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy) The software is based on a convolutional neural network that imitates the human brain, rapidly evaluating images from cameras during printing.

Image Source: PIXABAY This AI software can assess 3D printing quality in real time. A team of US researchers has developed artificial intelligence (AI) software for 3D printers that assesses the quality of parts in real time, without the need for expensive characterisation equipment. The software, named Peregrine, supports the advanced manufacturing "digital thread" being developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) that collects and analyses data through every step of the manufacturing process, from design to feedstock selection to the print build to material testing.