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Case Western Reserve University, in alliance with the Lincoln Electric Co. and a group of business partners, has been selected to lead a project to convert the laser hot-wire welding process developed by Lincoln Electric into a high-output, three-dimensional additive manufacturing process. The $700,000 project is among 15 recently announced by America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute in Youngstown, which is spearheading next-generation manufacturing technologies based on 3-D printing. The projects are winners of America Makes' second round of funding. Researchers and business partners developing the new 3-D process aim for a quick conversion. "The goal is to...

Everyone seems to have a different idea about what will spark the next industrial revolution: 3D printing, more sophisticated robots and even renewable energy have all been put forward as potential progenitors. The German vision of the future of manufacturing, as laid out at a talk this week at the Royal Academy of Engineering, is somewhat more complicated and extensive. Proposed by a government-backed working group of Germany’s top industrial companies, “Industry 4.0” envisages a world of self-organising smart factories where manufacturing machines talk to each other, to their products and to other links in the supply chain to make...

Boeing is struggling to complete 787 fuselage sections in South Carolina since a production rate increase, and sections are arriving in Everett more unfinished and problematic than before. Since late last year, Boeing 787 Dreamliner fuselage sections from North Charleston, S.C., have arrived at the Everett final assembly line seriously incomplete with wiring and hydraulics lines missing, according to multiple sources in the factory. The poorly done work out of Charleston threatens to undermine the company’s plans to deliver 10 Dreamliners a month and fulfill the much-delayed jet program’s original promise. “It’s snowballing. The planes are getting worse out of...

Curious why Michael Dell was so eager to take the company he founded private? So he could do stuff like this without attracting too much attention. According to the Channel Register, the recently LBOed company is "starting the expected huge layoff program this week, claiming numbers will be north of 15,000." Of course, with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows in an environment of falling PC sales, a commoditisation of the server market and a perceived need to better serve enterprises with their ever-increasing mobile...

On January 29th, Beretta USA officials joined with Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam (R) to announce the firearm manufacturer will be opening its new plant in Gallatin, TN. Beretta had been looking for a location for its new facility after deciding to leave Maryland over the draconian gun laws that state implemented in spring 2013.

A global manufacturer of high-quality sporting and military firearms, Beretta USA will invest $45 million to expand its U.S. operations by building a firearms manufacturing plant and research and development facility in the Gallatin, Tennessee, Industrial Park. The firm expects to create 300 jobs. “From the moment when we started to consider a location outside of the State of Maryland for our manufacturing expansion, Governor Haslam and his economic development team did an excellent job demonstrating the benefits of doing business in Tennessee. We are convinced we could find no better place than Tennessee to establish our new manufacturing enterprise....

Gregory Mark co-owns Aeromotions, which builds computer-controlled racecar wings. To make those wings both strong and lightweight, they use carbon fiber. No surprise there—it's the material of choice for many advanced motorsports parts. The problem is that making custom racecar parts out of carbon fiber is daunting. The only real method available is CNC machining, an expensive and difficult process that requires laying pieces by hand. To improve the process, Mark looked to 3D printing. But nothing on the market could print the material, and no available materials could print pieces strong enough for his purposes. So Mark devised his...

Officials said President Barack Obama will visit a western Pennsylvania steel plant after delivering this week's State of the Union address. A White House spokesman said Sunday that the president will travel to U.S. Steel's Irvin plant in West Mifflin on Wednesday to deliver remarks on the economy. The company said the Irvin plant produces sheet metal products from the steel slabs produced at the Edgar Thomson plant in Braddock. Obama will also be visiting the Washington suburbs of Prince George's County, Md. on Wednesday and will go to Milwaukee and Nashville on Thursday.

Boeing Co is hiring contract workers at its factory in South Carolina as it boosts output of the 787 Dreamliner and seeks to avoid manufacturing issues linked to the production increase, according to people familiar with the situation. Boeing confirmed on Wednesday that it is hiring at the facility but declined to provide details. The company was responding to a Wall Street Journal report that said the aircraft maker is adding about 300 contract mechanics and inspectors at its North Charleston facility. The Journal said the contractors were needed in part to avoid production issues with 787 body sections made...

One day a 3D printer, using a mix of materials, will be able to create body armor for U.S. soldiers that is more lightweight and stronger than anything could be made with traditional manufacturing and materials today. That's the word from researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who are working to revolutionize 3D printing, as well as the way that companies build products ranging from jet engines and satellites to football helmets. Scientists at the laboratory, a federally funded center in Livermore, Calif., that focuses on national security research, are working on architecting new materials to be used in...

Although the number of people who had jobs in the United States increased by 143,000 from November to December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that still left 1,687,000 fewer Americans holding jobs than held jobs six years ago in December 2007—the month the last recession began. In November, 144,443,000 Americans were employed, said BLS. In December, 144,586,000 held jobs—representing a one-month increase of 143,000. In fact, the 144,586,000 Americans who had jobs this December was still 1,384,000 less than the 145,970,000 who held jobs seven years ago in December 2006. However, the 144,586,000 Americans who had jobs in...

A bit more good news for American manufacturing as Whirlpool announced it would move its commercial washing-machine production from Mexico to the United States. According to a press release, Whirlpool will shift production of its commercial front-load machines from Monterrey, Mexico to Clyde, Ohio. At 2.4 million square feet, the Clyde plant is the largest washing-machine factory in the world. Operations are due to begin in April, 2014. The Wall Street Journal first reported the story. Whirlpool said the relocation will make the company more efficient, since 90% of the commercial machines are sold in the U.S. (the rest are...

Thanks to the gun control blitzkrieg led by Democratic lawmakers last year, Colorado is about to take a hit in the wallet in the midst of an already anemic economy, and lose hundreds of private-sector jobs at a time when they can least afford it.

      Why factory jobs may be returning to America What 2014 could bring after years of losing manufacturing jobs to low-cost Asia by Tamsin McMahon on Thursday, January 2, 2014 5:00am - 11 Comments VIEW IN CLEAN READING MODE » WHAT IS THIS ?   Workers at the Motorola smartphone plant in Fort Worth, Texas. (LM Otero/AP) With its 1.5 million factory workers earning as little as $300 a month to make iPhones, laptops and PlayStations, the Chinese behemoth Foxconn has become a potent symbol of America’s manufacturing decline and the transfer of jobs to Asia.Which is why so many...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- One of the country's largest producers of ammunition magazines for guns is leaving Colorado and moving operations to Wyoming and Texas because of new state laws that include restrictions on how many cartridges a magazine can hold.

FORT EDWARD, New York — When General Electric moves jobs from its capacitor plant in this Hudson River town next year, worker Mark Rock figures he might have to leave, too. About 200 jobs will head south as soon as September when GE sends local operations to Florida to cut costs. While New York has had successes in the constant geographical tug of war for jobs, manufacturing jobs like these have been dwindling for decades. People in this area south of the Adirondack Mountains are the latest to wonder what comes next.

FORT EDWARD, New York — When General Electric moves jobs from its capacitor plant in this Hudson River town next year, worker Mark Rock figures he might have to leave, too. About 200 jobs will head south as soon as September when GE sends local operations to Florida to cut costs. While New York has had successes in the constant geographical tug of war for jobs, manufacturing jobs like these have been dwindling for decades. People in this area south of the Adirondack Mountains are the latest to wonder what comes next. "The high-paying jobs that we have now in...

One day, millions of car parts could be printed as quickly as newspapers and as easily as pushing a button on the office copy machine, saving months of development time and millions of dollars. 3D printing technology is making that day come sooner at Ford Motor Company. The development of the engine cover for the all-new Ford Mustang is the most recent example of the use of this technology. Ford uses 3D printing to quickly produce prototype parts, shaving months off the development time for individual components used in all of its vehicles, such as cylinder heads, intake manifolds and...

Beretta has eliminated Virginia from its short list of states to move its company because anti-gun Democrat Terry McAuliffe was elected governor. The firearms manufacturer made the decision to scratch Virginia off the list after the McAuliffe campaign fixated on restricting gun owners’ rights after receiving over $1 million in campaign donations from billionaire New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. “The anti-gun ads that McAuliffe ran in northern Virginia were particularly offensive,” Jeff Reh, general counsel of Beretta USA, told me in an interview. “And the fact that he could gain a voting advantage by doing so caused us additional...

The charts above are based on new data from the United Nations on GDP and its components for more than 200 countries, updated through 2012. Here are some highlights of the UN’s data update:1. The top chart compares the annual manufacturing output from 1970 to 2012 (measured in current US dollars) for the five countries that produced the most manufacturing output last year: China, US, Japan, Germany, and Korea.  As I reported last year, China officially became the world’s largest manufacturer in 2011, with output in 2011 ($2.34 trillion) that was 20.6% higher than the $1.94 trillion (updated) of...