ZF Lemforder Corp. (Brewer, ME) manufactures suspension components for the automotive industry, including stabilizer links used in passenger cars and minivans.
Much like an offensive lineman in football, who gets noticed only after the quarterback gets sacked, a mechanical joint’s highest achievement is being able to remain invisible to all but the team that depends on it.
The number of people belonging to a union fell by 326,000 in 2006, to 15.4 million, according to a report released in January 2007 by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, union membership has declined steadily from 20.1 percent of workers in 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, and it continues to shrink.
Combining materials of choice is important for the appliance industry where “form follows function” is archetypal. Appearance, performance, cost, and assembly ease constantly dog the engineering community in this industry. This is particularly true when joining dissimilar materials, such as metals and plastics, into one unit or subassembly.
Beginning next year, the U.S. labor force will stop growing, marking the beginning of a generation-long trend, predicts Edward E. Gordon, author of The 2010 Meltdown: Solving the Impending Jobs Crisis.
ASSEMBLY magazine is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, we are publishing a series of articles examining the past, present and future of various assembly technologies.
Applied Cooling Technology Ltd. (Birmingham, England) manufactures cooling systems for the marine, automotive, power generation and petrochemical industries. Recently the company implemented a preconfigured Cartesian Motion System (CMS) from Bosch Rexroth Corp. (Hoffman Estates, IL) to help its proprietary finning machines install fins on heat exchangers.
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