US manufacturing tech up 18.5%

US manufacturing technology consumption for the year-to-date is up 18.5% compared to 2005, the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT) and American Machine Tool Distributors` Association (AMTD) have reported.

"While April orders were below the very strong level in March, year-to-date results are up over 18%, continuing the growth begun almost three years ago," said John B Byrd III, AMT president.

The report, compiled by the AMT and AMTD, represents the production and distribution of manufacturing technology, and provides data of domestic and imported machine tools and related equipment, Manufacturing.Net reports.

Trek to the summit

00Days

:

00Hrs

:

00Min

:

00Sec

As part of its family of energy-saving technologies, Metron Technology has introduced idle-mode software that enables process tools such as etch or CVD systems to instruct the Marathon abatement system to return to the "idle" setting.

This dramatically conserves electric power, writes Finazen.Net. The use of idle-mode technology in Applied Materials` Maydan Technology Centre has demonstrated savings of up to 17% on chilled water costs alone - chilled water systems can consume over 20% of a production fab`s energy, adds the article.

Japanese electrical company Matsushita has ripped out the conveyer belts in its plant and replaced them with clusters of robots.

This is according to BusinessWeek, which reports: The "new software synchronises production so each robot is ready to jump into action as soon as the previous step is completed."

The company says it used to be two-and-a-half days into a production run before it had its first finished product, but now the first is done in 40 minutes.