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Misumi launches Misumi Americas as part of $1 billion global manufacturing investment

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Japanese industrial components supplier Misumi Group has launched Misumi Americas and announced a $1 billion (¥150 billion) global investment program aimed at expanding its digital manufacturing and supply chain capabilities.

The initiative combines Misumi’s industrial components business with the AI-powered manufacturing platform acquired through Fictiv, positioning the company as a broader manufacturing and supply chain partner rather than solely a parts supplier.

The expansion includes significant investment in the United States and marks the appointment of Dave Evans as the first American CEO of Misumi Americas. [Read more…] about Misumi launches Misumi Americas as part of $1 billion global manufacturing investment

Why Optical Metrology is Replacing Tactile Measurement for Complex Component Validation Source

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Manufacturers validating complex components have long relied on tactile measurement, but a meaningful shift is underway as optical metrology earns its place alongside and, in many contexts, ahead of traditional methods.

The reasons are practical: non-contact measurement eliminates the risk of surface deformation, measurement speed improves dramatically, and the volume of usable surface data captured in a single pass far exceeds what point-based probing can deliver.

A coordinate measuring machine, or CMM, builds its dimensional picture one contact point at a time. That approach works well for straightforward geometries, but it struggles when components are fragile, organically shaped, or subject to tight validation cycles where throughput matters. [Read more…] about Why Optical Metrology is Replacing Tactile Measurement for Complex Component Validation Source

Connector Pin Processing: End-Face Finish and Burr Control

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High-precision connector pins fail in the field for reasons a standard diameter check won’t catch.

The parting-off face – that circular cross-section left after the cutoff operation – is where burrs form first, where Ra values quietly climb out of spec, and where poor deburring technology choices create field returns nobody traces back to the machining lot.

Solving section surface finish problems starts with understanding why the end face behaves so differently from the turned barrel – and which deburring approaches are actually suited to the pin geometry. [Read more…] about Connector Pin Processing: End-Face Finish and Burr Control

Precision robotics: Applications in electronics assembly and medical device manufacturing

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A few decades ago, industrial robots were extraordinary because they could place heavy parts with centimetre-level accuracy. Today, the competitive benchmark has shifted by several orders of magnitude.

Modern precision robots routinely achieve ±5 µm repeatability, with some specialist motion stages achieving sub-micrometre accuracy. To put that into context:

  • 1 micrometre (µm) equals one-thousandth of a millimetre, often called a micron. Put another way, 1 micrometre is one-millionth of a metre.
  • A human hair is roughly 70 to 100 µm thick.
  • An advanced SCARA robot can place components with an error margin smaller than one-tenth of a human hair’s diameter.
  • High-end photonics assembly systems use motion stages with a command resolution of 0.1 µm – too fine for the average human eye to see, even when aided by most optical microscopes.

[Read more…] about Precision robotics: Applications in electronics assembly and medical device manufacturing