International Metalworking News for Asia - October issue

Leading off the interview feature in October issue of International Metalworking News for Asia (IMNA) is Namson Technology and Engineering, a Vietnamese manufacturer of laser marking, cutting, and laser engraving machines. Vice Director Bryan Dang talks about the company’s products and the challenges they face competing against the well-established international brands. Peter Vickers of Hypertherm points out today’s industrial cutting solutions, which are now more significant with its speed and accuracy. He goes on saying that metalworking industry may hold even more compelling uses for this technology in the Asia Pacific region in the future. Vickers speaks of the areas he sees that needs more focus, and what he is bringing to Singapore headquarters that will ensure the required objectives are met. Highlighted at the Software & Control section is the changing landscape of the automotive manufacturing in Asia. The demand for vehicles is growing in the region with the biggest global potential. As a result, a digital enterprise that is open and collaborative can usher in a new automotive ecosystem. One which will include all aspects of the traditional products, services and the relationships between consumers, the vehicle and the enterprise, in both virtual and physical form. Notable in this issue is Anthony Evan’s report on the recent MTA Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh. Anthony writes, “As a way of getting a true understanding of a country’s potential industry growth, one is much better off looking at the buying habits of a country’s manufacturing sector, and their investment into new technologies, equipment, and machinery.” The large number of exhibitors and the large number of sales made at this year’s MTA Vietnam indicate that the Vietnamese manufacturing sector is indeed alive and well, and very optimistic about the coming years. This month we published a supplementary issue of IMNA Vietnam for our readers in the region. Vietnam is one of South East Asia’ hot spot regarding industry development. Most overseas companies are committed to servicing this growth by providing quality products, process solutions, and a superior after sales service. Finally, your comments or suggestions are welcomed. Feel free to offer any general comments you may have about material or articles on this magazine or offer a suggestion on how we can improve. We also welcome article contributions that you feel would be a good reference for other’s to read.

1st ASEAN Automotive Summit 2015

Join 1st ASEAN Automotive Summit 2015 on November 16-17, 2015 at The Landmark Bangkok Hotel [BTS Nana. Organized by Thai AutoBook & TEBA (Thai European Business Association) and supported by Ringier Trade Media Ltd. ( Conferences and Events), the Summit aims to help manufacturers, institutions and distributors deal with the challenges and opportunities in the rapidly evolving Southeast Asia manufacturing and automotive market. It brings together industry professionals from across ASEAN who are looking for manufacturing stratagems, who are eager to know how the industry is evolving, and who are interested in anticipating the market’s needs. We hope that you decide to attend and we are looking forward to seeing you there.

International Metalworking News for Asia

In this edition of International Metalworking News for Asia (IMNA) is a feature titled, “Finding the right tool for your automotive design needs.” It explores ASEAN’s position as a hotspot for global manufacturing. Find out more in the Software & Control section.

Didier Lacroix, senior VP for International Sales & Services at Cognex Inc. said that machine vision is necessary for many robot-driven operations in automotive production. In the Tooling & Workholding column, he explained how 3-D vision system can help in the production of vehicles that involves the manufacture and assembly of various parts and components.

We have been hearing a lot about additive manufacturing recently. Although additive manufacturing is not a new concept, it might be less familiar in countries around the region with less developed manufacturing infrastructure. David Wong S K of Nanyang Polytechnic’s Additive Manufacturing Innovation Centre (AMIC) has joined IMNA’s Editorial Board. He talked about the wider adoption of AM that will radically impact manufacturing processes and productivity in the Industry Focus section.

In addition to the regularly scheduled June issue, we interviewed companies, such as GF Machining Solutions, Schunk and ABB, during the MTA Singapore exhibition.

Also, this month we published a supplementary issue of IMNA Vietnam for our readers in the region. The IMNA June Vietnam Supplement Magazine shines a light on the dynamic and fast-growing Vietnam market. It offers useful case-in-point solutions to real world development challenges in the manufacturing industry.

Lastly, visit the new industrysourcing.com/metalworking website designed with a fresh new look and user-friendly navigation, updated with the latest information about the metalworking industry in Asia.

Finding the right tool for your automotive design needs

By: Kathryn Gerardino-Elagio

ASEAN is positioned to be the hotspot for global automotive manufacturing. The rising number of OEMs operating in the region has played an essential role in driving demand in the automotive industry. Thailand is the most favourable market as they have the ecosystem; followed by Indonesia, where there is particular demand for locally-produced low and middle-capacity cars. Next is Vietnam where the automobile industry is poised to grow significantly - driven by rising domestic demand and tax reforms implemented proactively by the government.

However, Thailand's automotive industry suffered in 2014 largely on the back of the prolonged political crisis, which hurt business and consumer confidence. Indonesia has been a beneficiary of this uncertainty; it was set to benefit from car manufacturing companies looking to diversify their operations away from Thailand. Meanwhile, Vietnam is most likely to have an overall positive impact on sales in the country, considering the aforementioned factors that are poised to drive Vietnam’s automobile industry.

Despite Thailand's current political and economic uncertainty, some automakers are choosing to ride out the slump in Thailand as they still see a long-term growth potential in Southeast Asia's second largest economy. As a result, Thailand’s automotive sector needs to get its house in order. While other low margin industries have refined processes and technologies to improve profitability and manage cycles and complexity -- the automotive industry remains stuck in a backwards thinking mind-set and old paradigms.

Many companies have warmed to the idea of outsourcing lightweight tasks such as software testing and data backup, but few are willing to trust a third party with vital jobs that could pose serious financial risk if they aren't performed properly.

The story of Daimler Mercedes holds an important lesson for how large businesses can allay some of those fears. Changing CAD systems is a huge undertaking for a company of Daimler’s magnitude. It’s not every day an OEM with more than 6,000 users migrates to a new CAD solution -- there are plenty of risks involved.

New way of doing things

Big OEM's don't change their enterprise CAD systems daily, so it was a huge deal when Daimler Mercedes moved to Siemens PLM Software’s NX. According to Professor Alfred Katzenbach, former IT Management responsible at Mercedes-Benz R&D department, the change has proven to be worth the effort.

The decision to consider other CAD systems started when Daimler upgraded their existing software version. The company decided that when the next opportunity presented itself—in other words, at the next version upgrade—they would look for and select the best CAD solution for the company.

“Daimler chose [NX] because it can do the job most effectively,” Siemens PLM CEO Chuck Grindstaff said. “The capabilities of NX met their needs, having the ability to integrate with Teamcenter and the future vision that we have. Really, all of these three things made the difference.”

Katzenbach said in an exclusive interview with ENGINEERING.com, “When we started this project our intention was to begin with the first new car line in 2015. Now, if we had done things as we did in the past–starting with a new program and keeping the old program alive–it would have led to a transition period stretching to 2028-2030.”

Daimler changed its philosophy and created completely new ways of doing things. They selected 250 different business cases. For each of them the company worked out the methodology required, based on their established production. Daimler even produced videos and placed these in a reference library accessible to users.

While there have been some challenges in the upgrading process, Professor Katzenbach assures us that a project of this size will always have its difficulties, even if you stay with the same CAD solution and change versions. Furthermore, the difficulties Daimler ran into were mainly ones of culture: It’s human nature to resist change, and there are always some late adopters.

Thailand: Thinking Big

Lower manufacturing costs; government-sponsored tax incentives; and a reliable, hard-working labour pool may have been the winning combination in luring the first industrial and high-tech manufacturers to Thailand a few decades ago. But that's not what will keep Thailand's throne neither as the Detroit of Southeast Asia nor to draw back future investors.

In an industry and market where many new players are emerging, more mature manufacturing hubs such as Sammitr Motors Manufacturing Public Company Limited - who marched the path towards integrated manufacturing - are following the footsteps of Daimler in taking a huge leap and changing their CAD system and becoming more competitive.

Thai-based Sammitr’s success starts and ends with satisfied customers, this is challenging because the needs of customers are constantly evolving. They began operations in 1967 as a producer of car and truck body parts, molds and fixtures. From its beginning as a supplier for small original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), the company has gradually expanded to accommodate the needs of customers across a range of related industries.

Automotive suppliers must deliver more innovative technologies and solutions across a global delivery footprint without compromising quality, cost, and timing requirements of their customers.

Sammitr has been using the Tecnomatix portfolio from Siemens PLM Software to help increase planning productivity and optimise manufacturing capabilities. As the manufacturing process for the automotive industry increasingly grows more complex, automotive industry suppliers must leverage advanced intuitive solutions that simplify and streamline the PLM process.

With Plant Simulation solution, Robcad™ software and FactoryCAD™ software, Sammitr was able to forecast the cost of each product, analyse the cycle time in the production line and generate usage analysis. Upon adopting the PLM solution, the company was able to quickly optimise resources and realise major productivity improvements.

With this approach, Sammitr helped customers such as Toyota by resolving small drafting tweaks and editing pieces such as moulds and jigs internally rather than sending every minor change back to the customer for further work. This eliminated a persistent challenge that had affected the production team’s ability to meet and satisfy customer needs.

The key to automotive supplier success is greater innovation, integrated manufacturing and improved program planning. Thailand's transition to high-complexity manufacturing is not going to happen overnight. With the help of a model-driven approach, Thailand can improve its cost, quality, and flexibility in manufacturing.

Finally, it is a fact that automotive toolmakers not just in the ASEAN region but all over the world, must move forward with new technologies, and perhaps hire new personnel. However, investment may not be possible without productivity gains derived from automating design and improving calculation times. Doing so requires not just new software, but a goal to pursue the necessary standardisation, even in the face of a diverse range of work. The specific road to get there may vary from company to company, but where there’s a will, the right software technology supplier can help provide a way. 

1 month to go before the 2nd Asia Automotive World Class Manufacturing Summit

The most exclusive Automotive Technological and ASEAN Business Development event of 2015

ASEAN countries have continued to gain economic footholds in the global market, particularly in the automotive industry. Automobile manufacturing and production has skyrocketed in recent years, most notably in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines. For next five years, what the master plan of these countries? How to merge automotive supply chain in ASEAN region? How they catch up the fast-moving automotive technology?

The 2nd Asia Automotive World Class Manufacturing Summit gather over a hundred attendees from multinational automotive OEM makers, multinational and local automotive Tier 1 / 2 components manufacturers, key parts manufacturers, processing machine manufacturers and representatives of Industry Associations from around the region will be joining the event on August 3-4 2015 at Double Tree by Hilton Hotel in Jakarta Indonesia.

The keynote speakers of the conference including the president of regional important associations in Southeast Asia - GAIKINDO (The Association of Indonesian Automotive Manufacturers), TAI (Thai Automotive Institute), MAI (Malaysia Automotive Institute) and CAMPI (The Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines, Inc.) to share their countries’ 2016-2020 roadmap.

This event will bring over 30 professional speeches to provide all participants with most useful information to gain insights on the latest technology updates and manufacturing solutions in the global, regional and local markets as well as foresee its impact on business adaptability. To learn more speakers and topics, please visit our event website: http://www.ringierevents.com/10200/index.html

Various conference activities to expand your automotive industry network, in addition the event will be held at the same time with the MTT Expo Indonesia Aug 4-7, allowing you to visit the exhibition also.

New concepts after welding: The message applied to metal stress relief

By: Weite Wu, Distinguished Professor, Dept. of Materials Sci. and Eng., National Chung University, Taiwan

Excessive Residual stress is an invisible killer for materials. In some serious cases, such as workpiece fracture, pressure vessel or chemical tank pitting corrosion will cause significant damage to public security or properties. In slight cases, it will cause workpieces deformation and also result in the loss of structural precision. Therefore, residual stress is an important issue that cannot be ignored in industrialized society.

Manufacturing and fabricating processes —turning, forging, welding, and heat treatment — introduce massive residual stress into the metal body. Especially, welding is the greatest of all metalworkings, because the residual stress contains solidification shrinkage stress, thermal stress caused by temperature gradient, phase transformation stress, as well as plastic stress.

Therefore, welders know that it is necessary to knock the weld bead after welding, not only for removing welding slag but also relieving the massive residual stress caused by welding. But is knocking effective? How much force is needed to apply? When to do it? I believe those questions have always appeared in welders mind.

You may have heard about the experience of our ancestors. When things do not hurry to be used, it should be placed outside to be worn and torn of the weather and absorb the essence of nature (exposure method, currently used in steel plants). Besides, there are also an action of striking trees while sword processing. Both are conducting stress relief, the former use thermal cycling, and the later use force cycling. Even the ancestors knew such inefficient ways to relieve stress, how can we modern people don’t know and doubt this intelligence method?

The reason is that you can’t see and feel the residual stress, but when you apply a force to the material and let the internal stress over its elastic limit, the material will vent the excessive stress by stress relief, this will lead to two results, one is material deformation, and the other is material failure. The results of both will cause problems when using the workpiece. After deformation, the object will lose the accuracy of original design. In slight cases, it will need to be re-processed, more seriously, to be scrapped and redo. However, both of them won’t jeopardize industrial safety.

But when the internal stress comes large, coupled with the external force, it may cause the material to fracture. The tragedy may happen in anytime, and this is what we have been always cautious about. Therefore, if you can eliminate the excessive residual stress before using, it is like a talisman that can protect the object. Hence, is the engineering you do safe? Have you done residual stress relieved? If not, then you are a dangerous construction project supervisor, or even you have no notion of stress relief, then you are not fit to hold this important engineering contract.

Stress relief

Stress relief of metals can be divided into two categories, one is heat treatment, and another is adding mechanical force. This can be simply explained by hot bath, and massage. When a person get nervous, after taking a hot bath, he will feel relax and a little bit sluggish, this is the phenomenon of releasing stress. But in this moment, you won’t want to work. Sleeping is better.

In addition, some people may choose massage to eliminate stress, during the course with a proper strength, it will make you feel a little pain, but not too hurt. After the toss, with a refreshing body, you can have a fully vitality while working. However, what is the difference between the two? It depends on how much you eliminate the stress. When releasing too much stress, it will make you feel lazy and weak, while with a moderate stress relief, it is like taking a good rest and having an energy drink.

This is same to the metals, the heat treatment can remove most of the residual stress inside the metal, but it will also reduce the strength or hardness of the metal. Some latest reported shows that alternating compressive and tensile stresses can release high stress concentration area, which means that by applying a fluctuating force (e.g. vibration wave) to make the material vibrate in a very high frequency, not only can avoid being damaged by residual stresses but can also maintain the original physical and chemical properties of metal.

Currently, the methods of residual stress relief are only heating or using mechanical force. Heat method is the most commonly used, but not every objects are suitable. For example, after heating the material may deteriorate (e.g. stainless steel will get sensitized and begin to corrosion after stress-relief annealing, as shown in figure 3), become soft (e.g. martensite in hardened steel will disappear and decrease in hardness), have great deformation (after stress-relief annealing, the workpiece will deform because of mass stress relieving), get oxidized easily (due to the material easy to catch oxygen in the high temperature), or the workpiece is too large, as show in figure 4.

In addition, the heat treatment equipment is expensive (especially with a vacuum or gas protective function), need a long-time processing (about four times more than the vibration), treatment space is limited (furnace cannot be brought to the construction site), etc. Then the vibratory stress relief (VSR) is the best option for these cases.

  

Appling a proper vibration can get a significant result of stress relief, if not, not only can’t release the residual stress effectively, but do harm to the materials or workpieces. The most common damage is fatigue failure, which will reduce the using span. When using vibration method, you have to know specific frequency and vibration mode for all kinds of materials or workpieces, just like everyone has their special acupuncture point in their body, only by using the right massage methods and strength can you get completely relax.

Such vibration mode of stress relief is the best in the world and has the U.S. patent filed. Currently, the market is full of VSR methods without theoretical basis, which is not only ineffective but doing harm to workpieces. But how to judge it is a swindler or a professional masseur? It’s very simple: just directly using equipment to measure the stress. If you have any needs or problems, National Chung Hsing University vibratory stress relief team is willing to provide such assistance.

Vibratory stress relief technique applied to stainless steel component

Vibratory stress relief technique applied to water pipe

Establishing new relationships across Asia at Asian Automotive Manufacturing Summit 2015

Spearheaded by Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s automotive sector has been growing at a phenomenal pace. In order to capture the market, OEMs from across the world are flocking to Indonesia and are expanding their operations.

The 2nd Asia Automotive World Class Manufacturing Summit will hold on August 3-4 in Jakarta Indonesia. It aims to gather institutions, manufacturers, distributors and buyers to establish new relationships within Asia and across Asia that can lead to new business opportunities.

The conference is organized by Ringier Events, TEBA (Thai European Business Association) and Thai Autobook 2015, and supported by ECCP (European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines), GAIKINDO (The Association of Indonesia Automotive Industries), AAIS (The Association of Aerospace Industries (Singapore)) and EuroCham (The European Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia). It covers quite a wide range of interesting topics especially relevant to the region’s SMEs. and together with the networking they will create unparalleled insights in industry.

What Participants have to say about our previous conference, "2014 Asia High Efficiency Metalworking Summit", click to see the video!

To learn more about the conference and online registration, please visit our website: http://www.ringierevents.com/10200/index.html