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Farmer John stumps the doubters with international technology success

Another Australian farmer is following in the footsteps of the inventors of the stump-jump plough by achieving international renown for his ingenuity for down-to-earth solutions for problems encountered by producers globally. Queensland farmer John Bucknell’s hydraulic bolts are now used around the world in applications such as nuclear reactors, boilers, turbines and mining and energy equipment where speed, accuracy and even, precise fastening of multiple sets of bolts is required. The idea originally stemmed from his desire to find a quicker and more secure way to fasten bolts used to tighten gang bolts on large disc ploughs on his family’s property near Nindigully, Queensland (about 500km west of Brisbane). Just like brothers Richard and Clarence Smith of Yorke Peninsula who invented the stump jump plough in 1876 to allow farmers to cultivate land without removing rocks and stumps, John used his disc plough to break in new country, ready for production, after his father converted the property from grazing to agricultural production, predominantly wheat. A better disc plough solution At the time, disc ploughs used scalloped discs mounted in gangs turning in order to chop up the ground. But these were prone to breaking if they encountered a stone, stump, or other obstacle. To replace them involved using a sledgehammer to loosen and tighten the large nut of the centre shaft of the gang. The whole gang had to be taken to replace broken discs, then the whole assembly had to be rebuilt once it was fixed… only for the plough to hit another obstacle 100 metres on, and the time-consuming process had to start again. Frustrated by this laborious process, he developed sets of hydraulic nuts and bolts to do the job of fastening and unfastening disc assemblies simultaneously, far faster and more securely than the old way of twisting […]

Young Talented Male and Female Engineers In a Modern Laboratory Discussing Prototype built with the Help of 3D Printer.

RS PRO & Engineers without Borders partner to launch student competition

RS PRO & Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB) are running a student competition with a strong focus on environmental, sustainability and social impacts. A call out is being undertaken for university students/groups currently working on engineering projects who want to take their ideas to the next level. RS PRO and Engineers Without Borders Australia are asking these students/groups to enter their concepts into the competition. The prizes are one of five product packs worth $3,000 which includes RS PRO components, tools, and accessories tailored to the project. The five winners will be announced later in the year and entries open early September. The competition criteria include: Socio-technical skills. Sustainable design skills, including the environmental, economic and social impacts. The demonstration of effective communication skills through the design pitch application and outline the teamwork skills of the project. A demonstration of how the fund will help the entrant achieve social, economic, and environmental impacts. Scott Philbrook, Managing Director ANZ for RS, the parent company of RS PRO, says he is looking to support future generations of engineers through programs like this. “The last two years has been a strange and stressful year for the evolution of design and engineering in many sectors,” He said. “The opportunity to submit your concept and potentially be given the tools to build the project is a kick-start for any entrant into 2023. The sustainable and environmental criteria is commensurate with current expectations in the industries applicable to these projects.” Entries are open now and the deadline is Monday 31st October, 11:59pm (AEST). To be eligible you must be aged 18 or over living in Australia & NZ and enrolled in a full or part-time university-level academic, engineering, or technology-related programme. To enter or for more information visit https://au.rs-online.com/web/content/m/rs-pro-student-fund

Gold Coast training academy established to support luxury marine industry

The academy at the Gold Coast City Marina and Shipyard (GCCM) will begin turning out an in-demand pipeline of skilled marine trades workers to fill labour shortages across the $80-billion industry, from marine labourers, to trade assistants, trimmers, fabricators, painters, electricians, carpenters, shipwrights and plumbers. GCCM CEO Trenton Gay said the marine sector had grown at an unprecedented rate, offering a massive spread of sophisticated and innovative job opportunities. “The marine industry is fast-paced, multi-layered and ever-evolving so for those seeking out new career paths, the academy is an ideal way to get the right advice and appropriate training,” Gay said. “Australia is being recognised internationally now for the quality of marine trades we offer, so it is important that we enhance the flow of job opportunities and talent within the industry.” Close to 40 superyachts have been brought into Australia in the past year, compared to around 10 superyachts in a “normal” year, with the Gold Coast and Queensland a key gateway to the influx. Among the lavishly appointed arrivals was 68-metre Lady Christine superyacht, worth $82 million, that arrived at the Gold Coast for a multi-million-dollar, six-month facelift. Owned by British billionaire, Lord Irvine Laidlaw who is a former member of the House of Lords and founder of the Institute for International Research, the craft was also used by George Clooney and Julia Roberts for their latest blockbuster, Ticket to Paradise, being filmed on the Gold Coast and around Queensland. The GCCM is part of the 250-hectare Gold Coast Marine Precinct, the largest refit and repair yard in the Southern Hemisphere. More than 90 businesses operate from the precinct, covering all aspects of marine refit, maintenance, and construction for vessels. Local employment and training specialists, DGT Employment and Training, will head the GCCM Marine Trades Academy program to deliver tailored support […]

Confident connections

Central Coast-based 4id Solutions opens the door to the true potential of the connected world – its leading-edge technologies enabling customers to track, trace, and protect important assets. Using intelligent labelling, credentials, wearables, and other digital identity technologies, 4id Solutions offers tracking capability to many sectors including healthcare and med tech; manufacturing, transport, and logistics; banking and finance; controlled substances; and entertainment management. 4id Solutions is a worthy nomination for the Hunter Manufacturing Awards (HMA) in three categories: Excellence in Innovation; Excellence in Manufacturing Capability; and Manufacturer of the Year – fewer than 50 employees. The Hunter Manufacturing Awards represents all businesses actively engaged in the manufacturing sector, including their allies, in the Upper Hunter, Lower Hunter, Central Coast, Lake Macquarie, Newcastle, Port Stephens, and Mid-North Coast regions. HMA has a loyal following thanks to its efforts of inspiring and encouraging vibrant and enduring manufacturing in these regions. A mission to promote best practices in manufacturing motivates the HMA. In highlighting the achievements of the best, it encourages and sustains the aspirations of those who want to join them. 4id Solutions is one such operation. 4id Solutions enables enterprises concerned with the wellbeing of people and the movement of material assets to validate, verify, and capture data with confidence. “It is accurate, secure, and reliable for the visibility you need – when you need it most,” says 4id Solutions Marketing Coordinator Michael Glenn. “Use cases include regulatory compliance, item traceability, supply chain security, product authentication, access control, and consumer engagement.” From industry-compliant labels and tags, radio-frequency identification (RFID) conversion and high-resolution printing, encoding and encryption, 4id Solutions has an answer. Powered by innovation, it offers unparalleled accuracy, and optimal cost effectiveness. High-quality labels and tags have various uses including asset tracking and logistics for highly regulated industries. Wristbands and wearables […]

Waste not, want not

Hunter Manufacturing Awards (HMA) Plastic waste is a blight on our environment, but one Newcastle company is “manufacturing change” – reducing plastic pollution and boosting business in the Hunter. Sustainable furniture company Resourceful Living transforms plastic waste into functional household items. Resourceful Living takes tonnes of discarded plastic, shreds it, heat-presses it, and cuts it into practical items ranging from furniture to clocks and even skirting boards. Based at Beresfield, the process “from pollution to practical” can take as little as two days. The company takes waste from yellow bins and environmental clean-up groups. An end goal is to help more big businesses improve their sustainability, all while bolstering the region’s manufacturing industry. As such, it is a worthy nomination for the Hunter Manufacturing Awards (HMA) Outstanding Start-Up Award. The Hunter Manufacturing Awards represents all businesses actively engaged in the manufacturing sector, including their allies, in the Upper Hunter, Lower Hunter, Central Coast, Lake Macquarie, Newcastle, Port Stephens, and Mid-North Coast regions. HMA has a loyal following thanks to its efforts of inspiring and encouraging vibrant and enduring manufacturing in these regions. A mission to promote best practices in manufacturing motivates the HMA. In highlighting the achievements of the best, it encourages and sustains the aspirations of those who want to join them. Resourceful Living is one such operation. With costs rising, particularly the cost of power, which also has issues around availability, it is imperative that local companies support each other. Manufacturing diversity is crucial for the Hunter region. Resourceful Living founder Jess Hodge says everything the business can use, it does use. And the possibilities for the end result are endless. “Covid made Australian companies acutely aware of supply chains and problems accessing products from overseas,” Ms Hodge says. “Now we’re manufacturing, we are also trying hard with […]

Unlock the value of data to drive business intelligence

By Kevin Dherman, CIO at SYSPRO Data forms the backbone of any manufacturing enterprise. With continuous supply chain disruptions, the allure of data and Business Intelligence (BI) is the ability to look deeper into production, performance, and efficiency. For today’s industries the issue isn’t whether they’re generating enough data, it’s whether they’re getting value from that data. SYSPRO research reveals that only 20 percent of manufacturing and distribution businesses have looked at investing in big data analytics tools to process and analyse data in response to ongoing disruptions, and only five percent of businesses have investigated the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to draw any long-term benefits from data collection. As industries look to digitally transform to the factory of the future in a data-first world, investment in technologies is irrelevant without data analytics to understand the internal and external factors impacting a business. Without the right data insights businesses are unable to compete with global supply chains as they don’t have the visibility to anticipate shifts and respond to market changes. Here’s how manufacturers can obtain visibility across the entire operation and collect accurate real-time data to not only automate processes but make data-driven decisions that drive the factory of the future: Actionable insights with ERP Ultimately, ERP fuels data-driven decision making and drives business intelligence. It allows information to be centralised and organised into readable reports and dashboards. With a variety of valuable KPIs, metrics and more information at their fingertips, they can act on new opportunities, respond to issues, and make informed decisions quickly. A SYSPRO customer, Ruprecht, was able to tackle supply chain disruptions and remain competitive through leveraging data insights. The business which supplies ready-to-eat food products in the US integrated their ERP system with AI and a predictive model to maintain […]

Businesses’sharing’ staff to make the most of downtime

A Gold Coast company’s match-making service is helping businesses make money by ‘filling the gaps’ in rapidly evolving workplaces. Peaks and troughs are part of the ride for any business, but a company based on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia is helping those troughs potentially become valuable money-earners. Technology provider BenchOn, has re-imagined its “staff sharing portal” to help companies manage their workforces in new ways. Established by the City of Gold Coast, The Gold Coast Business Portal uses the established technology to further strengthen the local business community, connecting local companies experiencing high demand for specialist talent with those that have talent to spare. Springing out of the pandemic, the platform links businesses and helps them tap into another organisation’s under-utilised talent, or offer up their own staff, for profit, to help others fill the gaps. Founder and CEO Tim Walmsley said while the company started six years ago, it had hit its stride as massive change tipped traditional workplace operations sideways. “The foundation of BenchOn is all around workforce management and ensuring that we smooth out the peaks and troughs in business so we can match the workforce capacity to where it’s needed across industry,” Walmsley said. “The collaborative platform system allows businesses to request support or offer out staff if they have capacity. “The AI (artificial intelligence) algorithm matches companies that need staff with a company that has a person available at the right time and at the right price, and it works as a business-to-business subcontract, providing the support of a certain skill set for a certain period of time.” As the world’s first business talent sharing platform, BenchOn sits firmly within the modern-day share economy. It supports more than 3,000 companies from global firms to banks and energy providers, through to small-to-medium businesses and start-ups […]

Centauri 5 satellite successfully launched

Fleet Space Technologies has successfully launched its next-generation Centauri 5 satellite on the Space X Falcon 9 Transporter-5 mission. This was the company’s third launch with SpaceX, following the successful deployment of Centauri 4 on the Transporter-2 mission in June 2021. Centauri 5 will be placed in low earth orbit (LEO) at an expected altitude of some 530km (330 miles). A 6U sized microsat with a total weight of 12kg, it will add capacity, reduce latency and provide additional network redundancy in the existing six-strong Centauri constellation, which Fleet operates in collaboration with Tyvak International. Upgrades to the Centauri 4 payload includes enhancements that mitigate the effects of radiation in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), direct communication links to Fleet’s ground station, and an extended S-Band range, allowing uplink at standard ground station frequencies. Digital beamforming provides extra gain, increasing the data rate, and also allows the S-Band frequency channels to be reused on the different beams. This combination increases the satellite’s data capacity by 2.6 times. In a world first, the all-metal patch antennas are all entirely 3D printed. The advances in 3D printing technology used in the construction of its patch antennal also feed into the development of the forthcoming fully 3D printed micro Alpha constellation, scheduled for launch during 2023. Together, the two systems will provide continuous coverage, data rates up to 520 kbps and tailored frequency bands servicing current and future generations of IoT devices. The combined constellation also enables Fleet Space’s ExoSphere system. This is transforming mineral exploration by using ambient noise tomography to locate critical resources up to 100 times faster and with far less environmental impact than conventional methods such as explosives, vibroseis machines and drilling. The Centauri 5 launch further strengthens Fleet Space’s position in the vanguard of the burgeoning Australian space technology industry, which the federal […]

One in five Australian businesses have paid or would pay a ransom for their data

New research from Thales has found that ransomware, malware and phishing continue to plague Australian organisations. Four in ten (38%) businesses been breached in the last year; 73% of ransomware attacks impacting internal and/or external operations. First seen in the late 1980s, with the PC Cyborg Virus, the frequency and damage caused by ransomware attacks has accelerated due to the rise of cryptocurrency as the preferred payment method. The 2022 Thales Data Threat Report, conducted by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, with more than 2,700 IT decision-makers worldwide, reveals a fifth (22%) of Australian organisations admit they have paid or would pay a ransom for their data. Encouragingly, half of Australian respondents (51%) have a formal ransomware plan while 37% of businesses have increased their security budget in response to heightened concerns. Similarly, half of Australian organisations (48%) have been able to avoid a breach notification process because the stolen or leaked data was anonymised using encryption or tokenisation.   Data Visibility is a Challenge As more companies adopt multicloud strategies and hybrid work remains the norm, IT leaders continue to be challenged by the sprawl of data across their organisations. As a result, less than a quarter (23%) of Australian IT leaders have complete knowledge of where their data is being stored, and only 23% state they are able to classify all their data. Threats & Compliance Challenges Throughout 2021, security incidents remained high, with almost four in ten (38%) businesses experiencing a breach in the past 12 months. Additionally, 40% of IT leaders admit to having failed a compliance audit. Australian IT leaders rank ransomware (45%), malware (43%), and phishing/whaling (40%) as the leading source of increased security attacks. Managing these risks is an ongoing challenge, with half (50%) reporting an increase in the volume, severity […]

Objective3D advances additive manufacturing strategy with over A$2million investment

Australia Manufacturing Week (AMW) 2022 news Objective3D, a leader and the largest Stratasys provider of Additive Manufacturing (AM) solutions in Australia, has invested over A$2million to advance additive manufacturing at a production scale, including new innovative material offerings and an expanded AM software ecosystem with the availability of new polymer 3D printing systems for the Australian market. The investment includes the latest in Stratasys technologies and a newly constructed manufacturing pods at the Objective3D Additive Manufacturing Centre located in Carrum Downs, VIC, making it the largest showroom and additive manufacturing service bureau in the region. The new technologies are the Stratasys F770, J826, J35Pro, H350 and Origin One and will cover Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), PolyJet, Selective Absorption Fusion (SAF) and P3™ Programmable Photopolymerisation. “These new technologies represent an opportunity to seriously tackle production manufacturing using additive”, said Matt Minio, Managing Director of Objective3D. “Our greatest growth today comes from customers who either wish to manufacture serious production volumes on their own additive system or have Objective3D manufacture for them. “These latest in-house technologies and new materials further enhance the ability for customers to manufacture greater production volumes using additive, producing components that are representative of injection moulded parts for their strength and surface finish. With the current disruptions to global supply chain, this technology couldn’t have arrived at a better time.” These latest technologies are currently available in Australia and will be available for viewing at the Objective3D Stand (stand no. AM30) in the upcoming Australia Manufacturing Week (AMW) 2022. SAF™ Technology powers new Stratasys H350 3D printer for production scale The Stratasys H350 3D printer is designed for the production of thousands of parts as additive manufacturing at higher volumes gains momentum in the industry. The first 3D printer in Stratasys’ new H Series™ Production Platform, powered by […]

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