Austin Engineering signs global supply deal with Rio Tinto

Perth mining equipment business Austin Engineering has signed an equipment supply and maintenance deal covering all of miner Rio Tinto’s global operations. The company will supply dump bodies, lightweight trays for ore trucks, heavy machinery buckets, water bodies and other fabricated products from its facilities in Australia, Indonesia and North and South America. Austin will…

Leadership in factory automation — exploring collaborative robotics

Today Leadership in factory automation looks at the potential of collaborative robots as a low-cost, more flexible and safer alternative to traditional factory robots. By Professor Jonathan Roberts. Manufacturing in Australia is dominated by small to medium enterprises (SMEs). Many of these businesses are not in a position to adopt mass production manufacturing methods due…

New additive manufacturing centre at Uni Sydney opens

A $25 million facility focussed on additive manufacturing R&D by companies and researchers, and located at University of Sydney’s Darlington campus, was officially opened on Monday. The Sydney Manufacturing Hub would enable “concept-to-production demonstration capabilities” for faculty and students, as well as private businesses. It hosts equipment and software for design and topological optimisation of…

CSIRO, BCA – kick-start your ‘commercialisation engine’

By Denham Sadler Australian businesses of all sizes can take practical steps that will “kick-start the commercialisation engine” and speed up a technology-led recovery from the pandemic, a new report from CSIRO and the Business Council of Australia has found. The report – ‘Unlocking the innovation potential of Australian companies‘ – offers practical ways for…

Government funding backed VET in 2020 – NCVER

Government funding for the VET sector jumped during 2020 the first Covid-19 year, according to new figures from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). In 2020, government funding provided through VET appropriations and VET intergovernmental funding arrangements totalled $7.7 billion, an increase in nominal terms of $1.3 billion or 20.8 per cent from…