Sigma Labs Inc (SASI)

[GetRich1day]

It provides slight insight into issues with configuring these machines. They are using this for their gas turbine which is awesome! GE is using technology from their GE store to spread across their production lines. It's nice to see it taking place. It's great to see a plan coming together.

“We followed the instructions, but the metallurgy wasn’t good.” His team spent four months analyzing 200 different software parameters and made 400 hardware modifications before they debugged the machines. This spring, they used them to optimize the design of a 3D-printed fuel nozzle for GE’s latest-generation gas turbine and bring it to production. The new design lowers the machine’s nitrogen oxide emissions and increases power output and efficiency. “We were able to run through 10 design iterations in just a few months and then ship the final version into production four months later,” Goodwin says. “Normally it would take us a year.”

GE uses its Predix software platform to stream data over the Industrial Internet into the cloud, analyze it and report problems and solutions back to the team.

These feedback loops are part of a concept GE calls the “digital thread.” Clay Johnson, GE Power’s chief information officer, says the plant still shows only a fragment of what’s coming. He says the digital thread will be constantly moving data from customers and suppliers to GE and back. “The system will be getting real-time feedback from sensors on parts inside machines,” Johnson says. “In the future the part will realize it’s getting degraded, automatically can reorder itself to be made, and schedules the field engineer to be on-site to install it. It’s Uber for industry.”

http://www.gereports.com/inside-ges-brainy-factory-of-the-future-what-happens-when-you-link-3d-printing-and-the-internet/