3 Days Until Early Bird Registration Ends For [MC]2 MTConnect Connecting Manufacturing Conference

Since its introduction to the manufacturing industry, the MTConnect standard has been revolutionizing the way manufacturing equipment and devices "talk" to each other on the shop floor. Anyone in the manufacturing industry can benefit from learning about this important standard. That's why you must attend [MC]2 MTConnect: Connecting Manufacturing Conference, November 8-10, 2011, in Cincinnati, Ohio. This conference will have something for everyone, from distributors to end users, to manufacturing technology builders, to software developers, to C-level executives, to professors, to students, and to anyone who just wants to really understand MTConnect. [MC]2 offers both business and technical tracks, hands-on technical workshops, panel discussions on the use and benefits of the standards, as well as a showcase of commercially available products utilizing the MTConnect standard. Conference attendees will have the opportunity to learn from the experts to really understand how MTConnect, as Modern Machine Shop said, is enabling tremendous productivity gains in manufacturing.  Those attending will return with new knowledge and skills so they can engage in a deeper dialogue on manufacturing productivity, as well as a much better understanding on what it takes to compete in 21st century manufacturing. Register now! This is an event like no other.

Celebration of Birthdays and 28th Year Anniversary

Below are some photos (I THOUGHT I lost most of them by previously deleting a single photo on my MacBook Pro appears to have permanently fubarr'd by sandisk, so I know need to buy a low-level formatting program to clean up my 16GB sandisk - but I digress :-)    Lesson learned - if your near 80 year old mother wants to take extra photos of everyone in front of the limo - let her - don't tell her that you will send her the photos from your camera - you never know in life.    I used two photo recovery programs - Stellar Phoenix Recovery and SANDISK CardRescue (preview of paid version).  I can absolutely tell you that there is little difference between the two in terms of finding the photos that were lost.   Thanks to Dennis Govoni for his advice on how to deal with this issue.  NOTE:  I did use both the low-level formatting program and the format program on the Nikon COOLPIX S9100.  UPDATE:  It turns out that when the sandisk was fubar'd, my camera put them on the internal memory and Julie found these when we were looking for beach photos in May 2012.  It turns out that if the Coolpix has difficulty reading the memory card, it automatically goes to internal memory.  You need to always look because it might find it one minute and not the next.

Anyway, back to Julie's BIG 50th bday, Michael's 21st bday and our 28th wedding anniversary.  We had the limo pick up Julie, John, Michael, Tim and me.  We then got Jamie Caldwell who we consider our fourth son (Michael's best friend) and one hell of a great guy and a great athlete.  We then picked up my parents and my sister - the Dr. - and went to Ruth's Chris Steak House.  Afterwards we had the limo driver take us through DC since a few of us had not yet seen the new Martin Luther King Memorial.  It was a great time.   Notice below how Tim had to hide behind John.

 

 Michael, John, Julie, Tim and me.

John, Jamie, my mother, my father, me behind my father, Tim, Julie my wife, my sister Dr. Julie Edstrom and Michael

Michael with the reflection in the mirro

4 Days Until Early Bird Registration Ends For [MC]2 MTConnect Connecting Manufacturing Conference

Since its introduction to the manufacturing industry, the MTConnect standard has been revolutionizing the way manufacturing equipment and devices "talk" to each other on the shop floor. Anyone in the manufacturing industry can benefit from learning about this important standard. That's why you must attend [MC]2 MTConnect: Connecting Manufacturing Conference, November 8-10, 2011, in Cincinnati, Ohio. This conference will have something for everyone, from distributors to end users, to manufacturing technology builders, to software developers, to C-level executives, to professors, to students, and to anyone who just wants to really understand MTConnect. [MC]2 offers both business and technical tracks, hands-on technical workshops, panel discussions on the use and benefits of the standards, as well as a showcase of commercially available products utilizing the MTConnect standard. Conference attendees will have the opportunity to learn from the experts to really understand how MTConnect, as Modern Machine Shop said, is enabling tremendous productivity gains in manufacturing.  Those attending will return with new knowledge and skills so they can engage in a deeper dialogue on manufacturing productivity, as well as a much better understanding on what it takes to compete in 21st century manufacturing. Register now! This is an event like no other.

5 Days Until Early Bird Registration Ends For [MC]2 MTConnect Connecting Manufacturing Conference

Since its introduction to the manufacturing industry, the MTConnect standard has been revolutionizing the way manufacturing equipment and devices "talk" to each other on the shop floor. Anyone in the manufacturing industry can benefit from learning about this important standard. That's why you must attend [MC]2 MTConnect: Connecting Manufacturing Conference, November 8-10, 2011, in Cincinnati, Ohio. This conference will have something for everyone, from distributors to end users, to manufacturing technology builders, to software developers, to C-level executives, to professors, to students, and to anyone who just wants to really understand MTConnect. [MC]2 offers both business and technical tracks, hands-on technical workshops, panel discussions on the use and benefits of the standards, as well as a showcase of commercially available products utilizing the MTConnect standard. Conference attendees will have the opportunity to learn from the experts to really understand how MTConnect, as Modern Machine Shop said, is enabling tremendous productivity gains in manufacturing.  Those attending will return with new knowledge and skills so they can engage in a deeper dialogue on manufacturing productivity, as well as a much better understanding on what it takes to compete in 21st century manufacturing. Register now! This is an event like no other.

MTConnect to be at IMTS 2012

MCADCafe picked up AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology's press release on IMTS 2012.   Below is a snippet discussing additive technology and MTConnect.

"There will be two other big features in the ETC: Additive Technology, and MTConnect®, the open-source communications and interconnectivity standard for manufacturing equipment and devices.

Additive Technology will feature the latest advances in this exciting manufacturing concept. These technologies actually "compress time" in that they dramatically reduce the time between design and production and eliminate certain processes associated with traditional machining, such as tooling. Additive manufacturing truly makes things possible in manufacturing that were not possible before. In addition, 3-D printing, a type of additive manufacturing, allows for "desktop manufacturing," bringing production to places it previously couldn't be done, such as homes and classrooms.

Finally, MTConnect® will return to the ETC in 2012. First introduced at IMTS 2008, this ground-breaking interconnectivity and communications standard is changing the way manufacturing equipment and devices are monitored and their productivity analyzed. The standard has been gaining more widespread use throughout the industry and has been called the "Rosetta Stone" of manufacturing because it allows equipment and devices to speak a common language."

Lion Precision Supporting [MC]2 MTConnect Connecting Manufacturing Conference

Don Martin, president of Lion Precision, has been a huge supporter of MTConnect and has done an outstanding job as the chair of MTConnect’s Sensors Working Group.   This Working Group has played a critical role and has done an outstanding job providing a open and royalty free MTConnect framework to easily enable sensor measurements. The importance of easily enabling sensor data in manufacturing can not be understated.

Below is a quote from Don that appears on American Banking & Market News:

“MTConnect enables machines to communicate information on nearly every parameter of the manufacturing process. Lion Precision is uniquely positioned to provide MTConnect compliant noncontact displacement sensors that can be used to monitor spindle performance including error motions and thermal growth as well as any other parameter requiring precision position measurements.”

 Lion Precision is a real thought leader as illustrated by the NASA example below that appears in the same article.  I blogged about this win a year ago almost to the day.

"The MTConnect protocol is being used by Lion Precision for a joint development project with NASA’s Stennis Space Center – the earliest implementation of the sensor protocols of MTConnect. The NASA project includes a multiple-channel eddy-current displacement sensor system to monitor valve position in rocket engine test cells."

60 nanoseconds faster than photons

Very, very interesting...

My youngest son Tim brought this to my attention when it broke yesterday.  My first thought was "cold fusion" until I read it came out of CERN.

Here is the bottom line so far:  "In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up 60 billionths of a second earlier than they would have done if they had traveled at the speed of light."

10 Days Until Early Bird Registration Ends For [MC]2 MTConnect Connecting Manufacturing Conference

Since its introduction to the manufacturing industry, the MTConnect standard has been revolutionizing the way manufacturing equipment and devices "talk" to each other on the shop floor. Anyone in the manufacturing industry can benefit from learning about this important standard. That's why you must attend [MC]2 MTConnect: Connecting Manufacturing Conference, November 8-10, 2011, in Cincinnati, Ohio. This conference will have something for everyone, from distributors to end users, to manufacturing technology builders, to software developers, to C-level executives, to professors, to students, and to anyone who just wants to really understand MTConnect. [MC]2 offers both business and technical tracks, hands-on technical workshops, panel discussions on the use and benefits of the standards, as well as a showcase of commercially available products utilizing the MTConnect standard. Conference attendees will have the opportunity to learn from the experts to really understand how MTConnect, as Modern Machine Shop said, is enabling tremendous productivity gains in manufacturing.  Those attending will return with new knowledge and skills so they can engage in a deeper dialogue on manufacturing productivity, as well as a much better understanding on what it takes to compete in 21st century manufacturing. Register now! This is an event like no other.

Social Security Is Not A Ponzi Scheme

I had this discussion with my father.  Here is an article by Dean Baker showing that if Social Security is a ponzi scheme, then so is the entire US government and most businesses.  Below is a snippet:

"The way in which Social Security is ostensibly similar to a Ponzi scheme is that it depends on new workers in the future to meet obligations that it incurs today. This also happens to be true of any debt issued by either the government or the private sector.

If the size of the working population in the United States collapsed tomorrow, then it would not have the tax revenue to pay off government bonds. Similarly, if the public stopped buying General Electric's products, it would also be unable to pay off its bondholders. Yet no one in their right mind would describe the bonds issued by the federal government or General Electric as Ponzi schemes."

 The image below is from Mother Jones: