Manufacturing companies got wrecked by cyber-spies last year, Verizon report says

Cyber-spies backed by nation-states were behind a majority of data breaches experienced by manufacturing companies in 2016, according to Verizon’s newly published 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report. Verizon identified 620 data breach incidents in the manufacturing sector last year — of which 94 percent could be defined as “espionage” driven and attributable to “state-affiliated” actors. Roughly 91 percent of material stolen in these breaches had been categorized as “secret,” relating to proprietary information owned solely by the victim. Cybersecurity experts say hackers largely target the manufacturing industry in order to steal trade secrets, business plans and valuable intellectual property. Verizon defines cyber-espionage as incidents that include “unauthorized network or system access linked to state-affiliated actors and/or exhibiting the motive of espionage.” “When you make stuff, there is always someone else who wants to make it better, or at least cheaper. A great way to make something cheaper is to let […]

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A Grenade Launcher Named RAMBO

Always one to push the envelope, U.S. Army researchers from the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) have been successfully experimenting with 3D printing for one of their latest technologies. The result? RAMBO — Rapid Additively Manufactured Ballistic Ordinance — a 40mm grenade launcher. Fitting name, no?

Virtually the entire gun was produced using additive manufacturing while some components — ie: the barrel and receiver — were produced via direct metal laser sintering (DMLS). So, 3D printed rounds fired from a 3D printed launcher with the only conventionally manufactured components being springs and fasteners, all within a …read more

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How Many Parts In A Triumph Herald Heater?

What was your first car? Mine was a 1965 Triumph Herald 12/50 in conifer green, and to be frank, it was a bit of a dog.

The Triumph Herald is a small saloon car manufactured between about 1959 and 1971. If you are British your grandparents probably had one, though if you are not a Brit you may have never heard of it. Americans may be familiar with the Triumph Spitfire sports car, a derivative on a shortened version of the same platform. It was an odd car even by the standards of British cars of the 1950s and 1960s. …read more

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Friday Hack Chat: Audio Amplifier Design

Join [Jørgen Kragh Jakobsen], Analog/digital Design Engineer at Merus-Audio, for this week’s Hack Chat.

Every week, we find a few interesting people making the things that make the things that make all the things, sit them down in front of a computer, and get them to spill the beans on how modern manufacturing and technology actually happens. This is the Hack Chat, and it’s happening this Friday, March 31, at noon PDT (20:00 UTC).

Jørgen’s company has developed a line of multi level Class D amplifiers that focus on power reduction to save battery life in mobile application without losing …read more

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Carbon moves into high-volume manufacturing with SpeedCell system, and bigger 3D printers

 Additive manufacturing startup Carbon is on a mission to help manufacturers and designers cut their costs, waste less energy and materials while speeding up the time it takes to get from concept to product on the market. The company, which has raised $221 million in venture capital, is firing up a new service aimed at contract manufacturers, and other high volume manufacturing businesses,… Read More Continue reading Carbon moves into high-volume manufacturing with SpeedCell system, and bigger 3D printers

Friday Hack Chat: ASIC Design

Join [Matt Martin], ASIC designer at Keysight, for this week’s Hack Chat.

Every week, we find a few interesting people making the things that make the things that make all the things, sit them down in front of a computer, and get them to spill the beans on how modern manufacturing and technology actually happens. This is the Hack Chat, and it’s happening this Friday, March 17, at noon PDT (20:00 UTC).

[Matt] has been working at Agilent / Keysight since 2007 as an ASIC designer. The work starts with code that is synthesized into logic gates. After that, [Matt] …read more

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Friday Hack Chat: Mechanical Manufacturing

Join [Sylvia Wu], a Senior Manufacturing Engineer at Fictiv, for this week’s Hack Chat. [Sylvia’s] work at Fictiv gives her a unique viewpoint for modern manufacturing. The company connects engineers with rapid manufacturing by taking in a design and routing it to a shop that has the tools and time to fabricate the part quickly. This means seeing the same silly mistakes over and over again, but also catching the coolest new tricks as they pass by. She also spends time tearing apart consumer products to see how they have been manufactured, adding to their arsenal of available processes, both …read more

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Akiba: Shenzhen in 30 Minutes

Multi-talented hacker extraordinaire and electrical engineer [Akiba] is based in Japan, and this makes it just a hop, skip, and a jump over to Shenzhen, China, the hardware capital of the world. He’s led a number of manufacturing tours aimed at acquainting hackers with the resources there, and now he’s giving you the benefit of his experience in a 30-minute video. It’s great.

Sourcing

When [Akiba] is in Shenzhen, he picks up all the same commodity parts that you would, because they’re just so cheap. And Hua Qiang Bei is its epicenter: it’s a gigantic market for components, and they’re …read more

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Silicon Wafer Transfer Machine Is Beautifully Expensive

There’s nothing more freeing than to be an engineer with no perceptible budget in sight. [BrendaEM] walks us through a teardown of a machine that was designed under just such a lack of constraint. It sat inside of a big box whose job was to take silicon wafers in on one side and spit out integrated circuits on the other.

[BrendaEM] never really divulges how she got her hands on something so expensive that the engineer could specify “tiny optical fiber prisms on the end of a precision sintered metal post” as an interrupt solution for the wafer.  However, we’re …read more

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Why an ‘Assembled in America’ iPhone Won’t Bring Back Skilled Manufacturing Jobs

It’s going to take a lot more than a trade war with China to stop forces like automation from transforming manufacturing. Continue reading Why an ‘Assembled in America’ iPhone Won’t Bring Back Skilled Manufacturing Jobs