Manufacturers seek new technology, networking at IMTS

The International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) 2018, Sept. 10-15, takes place once again at Chicago’s McCormick Place.

IMTS 2018 is the 32nd edition of this manufacturing technology show. More than 2,000 exhibiting companies will occupy 1.3 million net sq. ft. of exhibit space, and more than 115,000 buyers and sellers from over 100 countries will attend.

To help guide attendees to booths quickly and easily, the show is organized into pavilions that are geared toward specific industries and technologies. These include:

Metal Cutting. This area contains chipping machines, including lathes and machining centres, assembly automation, and flexible manufacturing systems.

Tooling and Workholding. This pavilion features jigs, fixtures, cutting tools, and all related accessories.

Fabricating and Lasers. This area is home to waterjet, plasma, and laser systems; welding equipment; and heat treating.

Other pavilions are Abrasive Machining/Sawing/Finishing; Controls and CAD/CAM; EDM; Gear Generation; Machine Components/Cleaning/Environmental; Additive; and Quality Assurance.

A highlight of this year’s show is the Additive Manufacturing (AM) Pavilion, which has nearly tripled in size since the preview show. The number of exhibitors now is more than 50, up from 21 two years ago, plus several exhibitors in other pavilions will showcase additive-related technology.

The AM Pavilion is one of two Emerging Technology Centers (ETC) at the show. It offers visitors an overview of the latest in AM materials and technologies as recently developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), public-private collaborations, and exhibiting additive manufacturers. It is located in the West Building.

The other ETC is the Digital Transformation Pavilion, which is located in the North Building.

Visitors will be able to see how digital technology is revolutionizing the advanced manufacturing industry, especially in the aerospace, automotive, medical, and energy sectors. A physically and digitally connected machine tool, robot arm, and coordinate measuring machine (CMM) will be on display.

Cobots, cameras, IIoT

IMTS 2018 also will feature the highest level of automation on the market today, with some exhibits highlighting the benefits of collaborative robots, or cobots.

“Automation suppliers have made tremendous leaps with software, control, and sensor technology that enables quantifying what the robot ‘feels.’ If it feels anything out of the ordinary, it will stop before exerting too much force,” said Mike Cicco, president/CEO, FANUC America Corp. “Where robots previously operated in restricted areas, we can now bring people and automation together to improve assembly operations.”

IMTS 2018 also marks the 10th anniversary of MTConnect, a set of open, royalty-free standards that foster greater interoperability among controls, devices, and software applications.

“AMT and IMTS were light-years ahead of everyone else when it came to funding, leading the development and marketing of MTConnect,” said Cicco. “Fast-forward a decade, and you can see a host of automation and machine tool providers demonstrating the benefits of connected devices at IMTS 2018.”

One of the over-the-horizon automation systems being demonstrated at IMTS 2018 will combine a vision system with artificial intelligence (AI) and a deep learning algorithm so the robot can teach itself to 3-D pick an entire bin. The robot will use a camera to take a picture of what’s in the bin, but it has no idea what the part looks like or where and how to pick it up. The algorithm will gauge whether the pick succeeds or fails, enabling the system to learn how to make a good pick as it empties the bin.

“The cool thing about deep learning is that if two robots perform the same operation and share their successes and failures over a neural network, they will cut learning time in half because they will never repeat the same error,” said Cicco. “If hundreds [of] connected AI robots perform the task, we could find answers to complex problems pretty quickly.”

www.imts.com