Global production of Polylactic Acid (PLA) is increasing dramatically as it becomes the biodegradable plastic of choice for a wide range of medical and industrial applications. PLA requires a specialized recycling plan…is your company ready? Attend this Webinar to learn what you need to know to prepare for the PLA revolution.

OPEN MIND Technologies AG, a developer of CAD/CAM software solutions, has partnered with Okuma America, joining the Partners in THINC, founded by Okuma. Partners in THINC is a collaboration network of more than 40 industry leaders who come together to solve problems and explore new productivity ideas for real-world manufacturing.

Nelson Laboratories, a business unit of Sotera Health LLC, has launched a completely redesigned Web site, nelsonlabs.com. The company provides microbiological testing and expert advisory services for medical device, pharmaceutical, tissue, and life science companies. The new site includes improved navigation, enhanced search capabilities, and an overall more engaging customer experience.

Earlier this year, FDA sent a challenge to the medical device industry: develop devices and diagnostics to help combat, prevent, and treat the opioid crisis.

A grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will be used to to develop standards for regenerative medicine and biomaterial manufacturing. NIST awarded a five-year Professional Research Experience Program (PREP) grant of $30 million to Binghamton University, Johns Hopkins University (the lead institute for the grant), and Morgan State University.

The award will allow the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Binghamton University to send a faculty member, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate and undergraduate students to NIST every year for the next five years to conduct collaborative research in standards development.

The University of Texas at El Paso will serve as the North American base of operations for Aconity3D, a maker of 3D printing equipment, under a new agreement announced by the two organizations this summer. Aconity3D, which is based in Herzogenrath, Germany, develops laser-based 3D printing machines for fabrication of complex metal parts for use in medical implants.

Aconity3D leaders say they were drawn to UTEP because of the prominence, expertise, and facilities offered by the W.M. Keck Center for 3D Innovation. UTEP has been a leading force in the worldwide revolution of 3D printing since 2000 when the Keck Center and UTEP’s College of Engineering made strategic investments in additive manufacturing technologies, known more popularly as 3D printing, to assist manufacturers in prototyping parts before investing in costly manufacturing tools needed for production.

Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) has awarded $1.4 million in project funding to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as part of its first round of funding to strengthen U.S. manufacturing. The project focuses on advanced robotics manufacturing and will develop an operator-guided, semi-automatic assembly process using industrial robots integrated with multiple sensors.

The goal of the project is to improve manufacturing productivity by enhancing the operator’s capabilities through advanced robotics, and appropriately applying the technologies that capitalize on the strengths of the robotics (e.g., precise manipulation) and the operator (e.g., decision-making).

Researchers are proposing the creation of a public, open-source network that uses blockchains — the technology behind cryptocurrencies — to share verifiable manufacturing data. The system could be used as a peer-to-peer network that allows companies to find small- and medium-sized manufacturers that are capable of producing specific components on a reliable basis.

Their approach, called FabRec, would allow companies to automatically report about their manufacturing activities: which machines are being used, what materials they are working with, raw material inventory levels, whether the work is being completed on time, and so on.

Researchers are getting a better basic understanding of how plastics cool from a liquid to solid shape in injection molding. They hope to understand how these polymers crystallize during flow in order to put this information into injection molding software.

The rate of heat transfer, either into or out of a polymer, makes an incredible difference in how a polymer behaves once it cools down. The goal was to achieve the levels of heat transfer relevant to injection molding if she used a device known as a flash differential scanning calorimeter, or Flash DSC. The machine heats small amounts of polymers up thousands of degrees in a fraction of a second.

MIT researchers, working with scientists from Brigham and Women's Hospital, have developed a new way to power and communicate with devices implanted deep within the human body. Such devices could be used to deliver drugs, monitor conditions inside the body, or treat disease by stimulating the brain with electricity or light.