“Be interested, not interesting.”
– Dale Carnegie
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1. Okuma Gets a Gold Star From AAM
Okuma America just took home American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc.’s (AAM) 2025 Supplier of the Year award in the Indirect Material category. The longtime CNC heavyweight earned the nod for its strong delivery, quality, and tech chops. With over a decade of collaboration (and a solid assist from distributor Gosiger), Okuma’s helped AAM cut costs and boost efficiency. It’s a nice win, and yeah, Okuma’s one of our own, so we’re definitely clapping a little louder.
2. When Hot Gets Small: Allvar’s Anti-Expansion Alloy
NASA and Allvar are working with a strange alloy that shrinks when heated. Dubbed Alloy 30, it’s helping space telescopes stay rock steady while peering at planets a billion times dimmer than their stars. The material compensates for expansion in traditional metals, pushing telescope stability into the picometer range. Bonus: It’s also headed to the moon and might just solve thermal headaches in everything from optics to quantum computing.
3. Crayons, Not Barges
While everyone else was offshoring in the 2000s, Crayola doubled down on U.S. automation, and it paid off. CEO Pete Ruggiero’s bet on Lean Six Sigma, high-speed crayon machines, and staying close to market helped Crayola weather tariffs and scale up. Now, 70% of its global output still comes from Pennsylvania. Sure, they still import some stuff (you try growing Brazilian pine here), but the strategy gave them room to grow crayons and theme parks without chasing freight boats.
4. Print Lightly and Carry a Tiny Chip
MIT researchers built a 3D printer on a silicon chip – literally. Using silicon photonics, their quarter-sized device fires light through nano-antennas to cure resin, creating 2D patterns without a single moving part. The next step? Fully volumetric 3D printing from a hologram. It's early days, but this could shrink 3D printers from desktop anchors to handheld tools. If successful, your future 3D printer might weigh less than the thing it prints.
5. Intel Hits the Brakes on Car Chips
Intel just shut down its automotive group, laying off staff and scrapping its EV chip dreams to focus on core products like CPUs and data center gear. Despite decades in the auto game – and a $15 billion Mobileye buy-in – the ROI didn’t pencil out. For U.S. manufacturing, it’s a reminder: Even legacy chipmakers with deep pockets and big plans aren’t immune to hard pivots. Meanwhile, pressure’s rising from overseas players to build smaller, faster, and cheaper. Buckle up.
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