Modern farming is a capital-intensive industry. The large machines that family farms and corporate farming operations employ to seed, weed, tend, and harvest can represent sizeable portions of multiple years worth of revenue. In order for the farm to succeed, these tractors, combines, harvesters, and other large pieces of equipment must do enough work to…
The centrality of quality management in medical device production cannot be overstated. For that reason, the production of medical devices is heavily regulated across the world, falling under the jurisdiction of various national and international bodies, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Commission. To help companies comply with this international…
Little problems on a large scale become big problems. Let’s do some math: You figured it out! Or cheated….it doesn’t really matter. Because the next problem is the most important one: Congratulations! You figured this one out, too. Now the only thing you have to figure out is what you’re going to tell Congress when…
This article is about using rotary torque sensors to measure torque during the torque verification and auditing process. But first, let’s talk football. Recently, a professional field goal kicker blew an easy shot. It was his second in the game and his fifth in two weeks. You can call it coincidence or cause-and-effect, but his…
Bad news from the backcountry. After two weeks of waiting for the right weather conditions, a local extreme skier lifted off in a light helicopter this morning to drop into fresh powder on a technical slope at 13,000 ft, hoping to shoot some high-quality action footage. The flight and the drop went okay—just not the…
Designing an assembly line can be exciting. For in-house manufacturing engineers, it’s a chance to shape the future of your company by designing the physical space that makes your future business possible. For consulting or third-party manufacturing engineers, it’s a way to demonstrate your skills in an interesting new environment. In either case, designing an…
In “The Twits,” a short story by Roald Dahl, Mr. and Mrs. Twit, a disagreeable older married couple, play a series of nasty pranks on each other. One of these tricks is particularly illuminating for manufacturers and repair shops relying on torque tools to properly assemble products or handle maintenance jobs. To get back at…
If you know something’s broken, you can fix it. But if you know how something got broken, then you can prevent it—and anything like it—from breaking in the first place. Which would you rather be able to do? In the assembly world, ideally, pieces in production don’t break at all. But, inevitably, they will and…
Since the day we figured out the wheel, humans have separated ourselves by working smarter, not harder. After all, our bodies can only take so much. There’s no way we could transport, lift, and stack the granite and limestone of the pyramids without barges, ramps, and pulleys. Modern electric screwdrivers allow workers to manufacture the…
Without the right assembly tools, you don’t have a production line. It’s the tools, after all, that allow your workers to assemble the pieces into a product. That doesn’t mean that finding the right tools is easy, though; each product is different, each factory is different, and there are hundreds of different tool options. How…