Manufacturing tech grows

April US manufacturing technology consumption totalled $281.54 million, according to the latest report released on 11 June by the Association for Manufacturing Technology and the American Machine Tool Distributors Association (AMTDA), reports American Machinist.

This total, as reported by companies participating in the USMTC programme, was down 27.2% from March, but up 2.2% from the total of $275.43 million reported for April 2006. With a year-to-date total of $1 259.09 million, 2007 was up 8.7% compared with 2006.

"Strength in the oil field and auto sectors has brought increased demand in the central region of the country," said John B Byrd III, president of the Association for Manufacturing Technology.

HF (13.56MHz) is the most popular RFID frequency by a big margin, particularly in money spent. It is still ahead in numbers, despite UHF tags being offered well below cost, due to oversupply of them, says IDtechex.

Though RFID communication devices and protocols have been developed in the past and exist today, in their present form they cannot be used on a large scale to enable communications with everyday objects. The fundamental reason has been the silicon technology employed to realise it.

This challenge was addressed by PolyApply, a consortium of 18 partners from industry and research. The key to achieving a cost point that would be lower than might be achievable with the evolution of the existing technologies such as CMOS, is to move resolutely toward a revolutionary new manufacturing technology - and also to go from batch processing to in-line manufacturing technology.

With printed electronics (PE) moving out of the lab and into ramp-up phase, manufacturing capacity will need to significantly increase for the technology's commercial potential to be realised, says a study by NanoMarkets, reports Tekrati.com.

The industry analysts estimate expansion already under way will boost the PE industry's manufacturing capacity from negligible amounts today to around 400 million square metres by the end of 2013, sufficient to produce almost $40 billion in printed electronics products.

According to the NanoMarkets report, the PE manufacturing infrastructure is beginning to ramp up. Several companies have announced new plants coming online or investments in companies building production capacity. This expansion is critical to the industry's growth potential.