Walking Shoes Ready for McCormick Place

Happy Friday! It's the last unofficial Friday of summer and the start of a long weekend in the U.S. I will be paying a visit to the Minnesota State Fair this morning. For those not in the know, it's the largest state fair by average daily attendance (Texas is larger but lasts much longer), with 1.8 million people visiting last year and attendance records falling this year. It's a great place to eat food that is bad for you and this year, the buzz of the fair is Deep Fried Ranch Dressing.

Let's get back to industrial tech things.

IMTS Makes Its Triumphant Return

The mother of all trade shows in the U.S. starts in Chicago in just over a week, with 1.2 million square feet of exhibit hall space. That's equivalent to 21 football fields, so wear comfortable shoes. I was literally limping after the last one.

For investors, I would flag a presentation on Tuesday afternoon by Bruce Lawler, General Manager of Re:Build Manufacturing and Managing Director of MIT Machine Intelligence for Manufacturing and Operations , speaking on "Investing in the Future of U.S. Manufacturing." He will be focused on applications of analytics and AI in manufacturing, drawing on research and best practices from MIT and McKinsey.

Other key speakers, all on the main stage, include Microsoft Corporate VP Kathleen Mitford on industrial transformation with AI, Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence CEO Paul Rogers on a pragmatic roadmap for manufacturing's future, and Rear Admiral Todd Weeks on innovation in the submarine industrial base.

On the new product front, Markforged will be showing a 3D printer that can print both metal filaments and composites, according to American Machinist . The FX10 Metal Kit pairs with the FX10, introduced in late 2023, with two printhead-mounted optical sensors for quality control. Supported metals include 216L stainless steel filament and 17-4PH stainless.

Finally, there are some big-name tech leaders exhibiting at the show this year, including Google Cloud , Amazon Web Services (AWS) , and Microsoft , all in the automation sector.

Nikon Advanced Manufacturing Continues to Roll

As I reported out of RAPID+TCT a few months ago, Nikon Advanced Manufacturing has had a good momentum run since its creation as a business unit last year, and it seems to just continue. Its SLM Solutions metal 3D printing arm reported 30% revenue growth in Q2, and the company opened its 90,000-sq.-ft. AM Technology Center in California a month ago. CEO Hamid Zarringhalam gave an interview this month with Engineering.com to talk about what's going right and why. He says the resources and commitment of a larger company is critical right now, especially to support emerging segments like additive manufacturing.

Today, we have a number of companies working with complex technology. You need to invest heavily in R&D—we’ve been investing about 22% of our revenue into R&D consistently. Patience is crucial because it can take several years for a design to move from concept to full-scale manufacturing. It’s at the parts level that it starts to pay off, so you need the strength and endurance to see it through.

He also said the company is working hard to integrate its native technical expertise in things like optics and precision equipment into additive manufacturing. But customers need Nikon AM's support as well, if additive is going to grow to its full potential.

Another crucial aspect is working closely with customers to accelerate their adoption of metal additive manufacturing. Unlike semiconductors, where Moore’s law drove inevitable progress, in additive manufacturing, there is still a choice between traditional methods like casting and forging, despite their limitations. We need to expand our customer base and speed up their journey toward adopting additive manufacturing.

Read more here.

Thought Leadership Won't Magically Come From ChatGPT

A substack post from Jake Meth caught my eye this week. It's called "What To Do If Your Area of Expertise Is Beaten to Death." In it, he breaks down an op-ed on sustainability and the Olympics, one I had actually read earlier, giving his take on where it is strong and where it could use improvement. I've rarely had a client who wasn't interested in building corporate or personal brands via thought leadership, but it's not easy to do well. For one thing, executives slip into sales mode rather naturally. It's understandable, but your solution is not thought leadership, it only relates to one (hopefully). For another, your thinking on an issue has to be on the leading edge. If your peers have already written or spoken extensively on an issue, what are you contributing to the conversation that is truly fresh and not just incremental? Even if you get a safe piece published, it won't earn eyeballs or social shares. I want to see something that gets people talking.

So the piece at hand potentially suffered from that category of bland and overtalked. And the headline starts us down that path:

The Paris Olympics embrace sustainability even as sports struggle to adapt to climate change / This summer’s Games offer an opportunity to show the world the value of anticipating and adapting to environmental challenges.

But after the headline - probably written by an editor rather than the author, the author gets a lot more specific, with a lot of showing, and not just telling, such as context-setting like this:

Winter sports face the greatest threats from climate change as temperatures rise and precipitation changes, dramatically shortening winter sports seasons in many areas. In 2022, the Beijing Winter Games had to artificially create snow so it could have ski runs at all. The International Olympic Committee has delayed its decision to select Winter Games host cities for 2030 and beyond because of the uncertainty of winter sports.

It's a nice tutorial. And hopefully, you'll understand why I'm going to work so hard challenging you to make sure that everything in your piece holds together well, keeps our attention and still accomplishes a business objective.