Oqton
Software : Operational Technology : Manufacturing Execution System
Unify your engineering and production. Increase innovation and efficiency with a single, technology-neutral and hardware agnostic Manufacturing OS that connects your applications and machines across multiple sites. Combining artificial intelligence with machine learning and IoT, you can track every action with a digital thread for complete traceability and visibility from order to delivery.
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🖨️ 3D printing software developer Oqton and Baker Hughes form partnership
3D printing specialist Oqton and petroleum services company Baker Hughes enter into an agreement to use Oqton’s additive manufacturing software suite. The agreement will bring together the two companies’ engineering expertise and knowledge of manufacturing to develop an industrial digital ecosystem that will transform how manufacturers bring their products to market in highly regulated industries such as energy, aerospace, and healthcare. The solution is intended to accelerate the design and production of additively manufactured parts across the entire manufacturing workflow to increase efficiency and facilitate regulatory compliance.
Automatically Weaving the Digital Thread in 3D Printing with Oqton
In the case of dental aligners, which rely on patient-specific 3D printed molds, the Manufacturing OS plays an integral role in enabling lights-out, automated production. Schrauwen explained that the Oqton Manufacturing OS “manages everything from scheduling to nesting to build preparation, managing the machines, tracking failures, tracking the CNC, trimming, laser marking—everything.”
By being integrated into every aspect of the production process, the Oqton Manufacturing OS offers benefits aside from AI-based automation. Specifically, it enables traceability for such highly regulated fields as medicine, aerospace/military, and oil and gas. Unlike some other MES providers, Oqton built material traceability into the core of its software because it wanted to target highly regulated industries early on. With this built-in traceability, fields that require a full accounting of a manufactured item can log into the Oqton Manufacturing OS to get a full report about a part all the way down to the sensor values and oxygen concentration thresholds used on the printer while it was being printed.
Impeller Design & Optimization for Additive Manufacturing
Wärtsilä’s engineers redesigned the centrifugal pump impeller for additive manufacturing. Not only was the optimized turbomachinery component 44% lighter, but it was generated using an automated design process, enabling customization.
For this collaborative project, engineers from Wärtsilä’s additive manufacturing center in Finland joined forces with nTopology, SLM Solutions, and Oqton to create a digital workflow based on advanced engineering design and additive manufacturing technologies. The primary aim of this project was to replace the traditionally cast impeller.