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3D printing has been making waves in the manufacturing arena which is touted as the next big thing to revolutionise consumerism and product development. Just as e-commerce has removed the boundaries for marketing and brought the consumers and producers closer, 3D printing is expected to enlarge the market for producers by removing the shackles of production volumes, minimising the time to market and customising the product as per individual customer needs and all of this at affordable costs. In the early days of product creation, nuts, screws and hinges were individually hand-crafted for a very long time until the industrialisation...

Shares of Boeing (BA) climbed into the green early Monday after the jet maker unveiled fresh orders for its upcoming 777x and struck a new supply deal with a major firm in the United Arab Emirates. The Chicago-based Dreamliner maker racked up roughly $100 billion in orders with Middle Eastern carriers on the first day of the 2013 Dubai Airshow. The 342 orders in the fast-growing market doubled those awarded to rival Airbus.

SEATTLE (AP) — Boeing's history in the Pacific Northwest dates back more than a century, when William Boeing purchased a Seattle shipyard that would become his first airplane factory. In recent years, however, those ties have been fraying, first with the company shifting its headquarters to Chicago, then with the development of a new production line in South Carolina. Now, the relationship between Boeing and Washington state is near the point of unraveling after a fiery debate among machinists this week led the workers to reject a long-term contract. On Thursday, Boeing made good on its threats and said it...

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) leadership had negotiated a new contract with Boeing that would have taken effect in 2016. The deal called for cuts in wage increases for union members, reduced health care benefits and lower company contributions to its defined benefit retirement plan. Some 67% of IAM members voted to reject the deal, and the union local president said that members had “preserved something sacred by rejecting the Boeing proposal. We’ve held on to our pensions and that’s big. At a time when financial planners are talking about a ‘retirement crisis’ in America, we...

This will probably come as no surprise to those who watched the federal government stepping in to help unions strongarm manufacturers in the last few years, but Boeing is back in the news with more labor issues. The aerospace giant is getting ready to unveil their newest jet – the 777X – which had been widely expected to be built in the Seattle area as so many of their other lines have been. But at the last minute, the unions decided the deal wasn’t fat enough for their tastes. Boeing workers’ rejection of a new labour deal has sent the...

Members of the Machinists union vote today on a contract with Boeing that the aircraft maker says will determine whether it will build the next generation of its 777 jets at its Seattle manufacturing hub. About 20,000 jobs at Boeing and its suppliers are riding on the decision of where to build the 777X, which is set to become a key part of its fleet. Also at stake is the Machinsts' pension plan, which will be converted into a 401(k) type of retirement program if the contract is approved. That change has sparked anger among Boeing workers, and raised the...

A dramatic showdown is underway in the State of Washington, pitting Boeing against its largest labor union, the International Association of Machinists (IAM). If the union, voting Wednesday, rejects a proposed contract that includes lower health care benefits, Boeing is threatening to move production of its next generation airliner, the 777X, out of the Puget Sound region, to such locations as Charleston, SC (where it is assembling the new 787) or Texas, right-to-work states where the union's demands would hold no sway. The Washington State Legislature takes Boeing's threats very seriously, indeed. Boeing has long complained about the tax burden...

Could 3D printing help solve the world's shelter crises? At a TED talk in Ojai, Calif., Behrokh Khoshnevis, director of the Manufacturing Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Southern California, said nearly 1 billion people in the world don’t have access to adequate shelter, a situation that breeds poverty, disease, illiteracy, crime and overpopulation. To address this problem, Khoshnevis is developing a process called Contour Crafting to use 3D printing technology to build entire houses. Khoshnevis said the giant 3D printers his team is developing can build a 2,500-square-foot house in as little as 20 hours. The Contour Crafting...

Conventional wisdom holds that America’s transition from a manufacturing to a service-based economy is nearly complete. Mining and making stuff are out; surgery and software development are in. The U.S. has entered a post-industrial era. Not so fast, says Vaclav Smil. In his new book, Made in the U.S.A.: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing, Smil argues persuasively that manufacturing matters as much in the current century as it did in the last—and that a revitalized manufacturing sector is vital for restoring growth, jobs, and American social dynamism. Technology creates efficiency, Smil writes. But, as he shows, efficiency confuses...

The biggest breakthroughs in how we make things lie not in the technology to manipulate materials but in the materials themselves. Such is the thinking behind “4-D printing,” an experimental approach to manufacturing that expands on much-hyped 3-D printing processes. Instead of building static three-dimensional items from layers of plastics or metals, 4-D printing employs dynamic materials that continue to evolve in response to their environment. This new wrinkle in the maker movement comes courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Self-Assembly Lab, where director Skylar Tibbits and his team are experimenting with so-called “programmable materials.” The researchers print these...

BAYONNE, NEW JERSEY – Henry Repeating Arms, the leading lever action rifle manufacturer headquartered in Bayonne, N.J., will begin manufacturing their steel centerfire rifles in their Rice Lake, Wisconsin facility in 2014. To date the Wisconsin plant has supplied the Bayonne operation with many components used in all Henry models including receivers, bolts, sights and other internal parts. Several million dollars of new computerized machining equipment was invested in the Wisconsin facility to support the manufacturing of the company’s caliber .30-30 and .45-70 rifles and to increase the volume of the components produced for its rimfire rifles. Henry Repeating Arms...

When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the SAFE Act in January—what he referred to as “common sense” gun-control legislation—the law not only turned many law-abiding citizens into criminals, it also drove businesses and jobs out of the state. With a move to South Carolina, American Tactical Imports has become the third firearm company to relocate its operations from New York to more gun-friendly states. According to Guns.com: ATI is largely an importer and distributor of domestic firearms, although they do some manufacturing. They plan to move from Rochester to Summerville, a city on the outskirts of Charleston, starting next...

A Rochester-based company that makes firearms, ammunition and tactical equipment is relocating its headquarters in Dorchester County, South Carolina officials announced Monday. The state Department of Commerce said that the $2.7 million investment by American Tactical Imports, currently located on Airpark Drive, would mean more than 100 new jobs for the Summerville area.

Yesterday, I posted charts showing the deceleration of economic indicators in the USA, as The Fed’s Balance sheet continues to grow (white). The indicators are labor force participation (purple), M2 Money Velocity (gold) and the 10 year Treasury yield (green). charming Today, we got another deceleration warning from durable goods orders (non-airline, non-defense). Orders for U.S. equipment such as computers and machinery unexpectedly declined in September for the second time in three months, indicating business spending was weakening ahead of the partial government shutdown. Bookings for non-military capital goods excluding aircraft decreased 1.1 percent, the Commerce Department reported today in...

Cessna CEO Scott Ernest told aviation media at NBAA 2013 in Las Vegas the company's made-in-China S-LSA Skycatcher has "no future" but he didn't have much to say about it other than that.

Ashtabula is about to benefit from the Utica shale boom, as a Texas energy company and a technology firm from Columbus plan to build a gas-to-liquids processing plant in the city. Houston-based Pinto Energy said it will spend about $300 million to build the plant, which is expected to be completed and online in early 2016. The plant would take processed natural gas from the Utica and Marcellus shale plays and convert it into diesel fuel, high-end lubricants and industrial waxes used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and other products. Once finished, the plant will employ about 30 people, but Pinto said...

Wealth among the richest in the Asia-Pacific region could surpass that of North America as soon as next year, a joint report by Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management showed on Wednesday. The total wealth of high net-worth individuals in the region – defined as those with investable assets of $1 million and above – is expected to rise to $15.9 trillion by 2015, compared with $12 trillion in 2012. Wealth of the equivalent group of individuals in North America stood at $12.7 trillion last year.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)A new worker's revolution is rising in China and it doesn't involve humans. With soaring wages and an aging population, electronics factory managers say the day is approaching when robotic workers will replace people on the Chinese factory floor. A new wave of industrial robots is in development, ranging from high-end humanoid machines with vision, touch and even learning capabilities, to low-cost robots vying to undercut China's minimum wage....

The old textile mills here are mostly gone now. Gaffney Manufacturing, National Textiles, Cherokee — clangorous, dusty, productive engines of the Carolinas fabric trade — fell one by one to the forces of globalization. Just as the Carolinas benefited when manufacturing migrated first from the Cottonopolises of England to the mill towns of New England and then to here, where labor was even cheaper, they suffered in the 1990s when the textile industry mostly left the United States. It headed to China, India, Mexico — wherever people would spool, spin and sew for a few dollars or less a day....

Aeroflot will pay up to $7.47 billion, including maintenance and insurances, to lease 50 Boeing jets for up to 18 years, Vedomosti reported on Friday, citing two sources close to the state-controlled airline and the leasing company Avia Capital Service. Experts said that the 737 Next Generation aircraft would be used to update Aeroflot's fleet and potentially become the foundation for the company's planned low-cost airline. The lease deal needs to be approved at Aeroflot's shareholder meeting on Oct. 15. Airplanes in the Boeing 737 family cost from $76 million to $109.9 million each to purchase, according to Boeing's catalogue,...