Increasingly strict fuel efficiency standards have driven the aerospace and automotive industries to improve the fuel economy of their fleets. A key method for feasibly improving the fuel economy is by decreasing the weight, which requires the introduction of materials with high strength to weight ratios into airplane and vehicle designs. Many of these materials are not as formable or machinable as conventional low carbon steels, making production difficult when using traditional forming and machining strategies and capital. Electrical augmentation offers a potential solution to this dilemma through enhancing process capabilities and allowing for continued use of existing equipment. The use of electricity to aid in deformation of metallic materials is termed as electrically assisted manufacturing (EAM). The direct effect of electricity on the deformation of metallic materials is termed as electroplastic effect. This paper presents a summary of the current state-of-the-art in using electric current to augment existing manufacturing processes for processing of higher-strength materials. Advantages of this process include flow stress and forming force reduction, increased formability, decreased elastic recovery, fracture mode transformation from brittle to ductile, decreased overall process energy, and decreased cutting forces in machining. There is currently a lack of agreement as to the underlying mechanisms of the electroplastic effect. Therefore, this paper presents the four main existing theories and the experimental understanding of these theories, along with modeling approaches for understanding and predicting the electroplastic effect.

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Manufacturing technology changes with the needs of consumers. The globalization of the world economy has helped to create the concept of cloud manufacturing (CM). The purpose of this paper is to provide both an overview and an update on the status of CM and define the key technologies that are being developed to make CM a dependable configuration in today's manufacturing industry. Topics covered include: cloud computing (CC), the role of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), pay-as-you-go, resource virtualization, interoperability, security, equipment control, and the future outlook of the development of CM.

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This paper presents an integrated cyber-physical system for remote accessibility and controllability of factory equipment, e.g. CNC machines and robots. It is enabled by combining 3D models, sensor data and camera images in real-time. The aim of this research is to significantly reduce network traffic for much improved accessibility and controllability of any cyber-physical systems over the Internet. The ultimate goal is to build cloud-based services of monitoring, process planning, machining and assembly in decentralised environment. This paper covers the basis of the approach, system architecture and implementation, and a case study of remote control of a robotic assembly cell. Compared with camera-based systems, our approach consumes less than 1% of its network bandwidth, feasible and practical as a future cloud-based solution.