#dental office in detroit michigan

[mykidstoothdocs]

The Ultimate Guide to Pediatric Dentistry and Dental Implants in Michigan

Looking for expert dental implants in Detroit? At Megan E. Stowers Pediatric Dentist, we specialize in providing advanced dental care tailored to children. Recognized as a top children's dental specialist, our team delivers personalized treatments in a compassionate environment. Whether it’s dentistry for children or complex restorative procedures like dental implants, we ensure every child’s smile gets the care it deserves.

As a leading pediatric dentist in Michigan, Dr. Megan E. Stowers focuses on making each visit comfortable and stress-free for children of all ages. From routine cleanings to pediatric dentistry solutions, our office is equipped with state-of-the-art technology for safe and effective treatments. Families across Detroit trust our dental office for everything from preventive care to specialized services like dental implants.

We’re proud to serve as one of the top dentists in Detroit, offering comprehensive care in a child-friendly environment. Our expertise in pediatric dentistry Michigan ensures that children not only maintain healthy teeth but also build positive dental habits for life. If you're searching for a trusted pediatric dentist in Detroit MI, look no further than Megan E. Stowers Pediatric Dentist.

Conveniently located for families seeking children’s dental specialists, we’re committed to delivering outstanding care tailored to your child’s needs. From our welcoming staff to our kid-focused approach, we strive to create a comfortable space for dental care. We’re here to help your child achieve and maintain a healthy, happy smile with services like dental implants Detroit residents trust.

Visit us to experience the difference with one of the best dental care providers in Michigan. Schedule an appointment with Megan E. Stowers Pediatric Dentist today and discover why we’re a trusted name in children's dental care across the region. Whether you're searching for dentistry for children or the best pediatric dentist near you, we’re here to support your child’s dental health journey.

[ddsmatchmi]

If you are in the market for a pediatric dental practice, Michigan DDsmatch has an exciting opportunity for you. A pediatric dental practice for sale through Michigan DDsmatch signifies not only a strategic business move but also a commitment to providing top-notch oral care to children. These practices are meticulously evaluated, ensuring that they align with the highest standards of pediatric dentistry. Acquiring a pediatric practice through Michigan DDsmatch means stepping into a well-established and reputable clinic, equipped with the latest technology and a dedicated team focused on pediatric oral health. This presents a rare chance to take the reins of a thriving pediatric dental practice, making a positive impact on the community while securing a promising future in pediatric dentistry.

[retropopcult]

Panoramic view of the corner of Woodward & Jefferson Avenues in Detroit, 1904.  Featuring the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad office, a vintage newsie, the "painless dental parlor," a kid on a bicycle, ectoplasmic pedestrians and a cameo by Goebel's beer.  Part of the Detroit Publishing Co. collection.

[glowfamilydental]

Meet Dr. Carlos M. Martinez

Dr. Martinez believes that truly great dentistry isn’t just built upon world-class clinical skills, but a deep and trusting relationship between dentist and patient. When that relationship is solid, a patient feels more comfortable, is more likely to express any issues, and will attend appointments more regularly. This approach also enables Dr. Martinez to specially tailor his care to each unique individual to ensure a fantastic outcome and smooth experience. Of course, all relationships must begin with an introduction, so below, you can start getting to know Dr. Martinez.

WHY DID YOU WANT TO BECOME A DENTIST?

Dr. Martinez was always drawn to the medical field and helping people, but he wanted to choose a career that would also allow him to enjoy his life outside of work. Dentistry seemed to be a perfect fit. He likes how he’s able to work a regular five-day week just like everyone else, plus he’s able to make a real difference in people’s lives by improving their health and confidence at the same time.

WHERE DID YOU STUDY DENTISTRY?

Dr. Martinez attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he received his bachelors of science in Biology. It was here where he started to develop an interest in dentistry. After many hours of observation in dental offices, he realized it was the career he wanted to pursue.

He eventually graduated from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Dentistry in 2010 and practiced in Michigan for almost two years. After spending most of his life in the north, it was time for a change, and a move to Texas would bring him to his new home.

Practicing dentistry for 8 years has not changed Dr. Martinez’s dedication to continuing education. He knows that in order to provide the best care possible, one has to stay up to date on the newest technologies, techniques, and materials. He’s also able to expand his knowledge and network of other dentists as a proud member of the Hispanic Dental Association. He has many interests in the dental field, and he is always excited to learn more year after year so he can provide an even higher level of care.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO DO OUTSIDE OF DENTISTRY?

Dr. Martinez is fluent in English, Spanish, and he is currently studying Italian. His biggest interest outside of dentistry and learning new languages, however, involves staying healthy. He works out and practices yoga most days of the week, and he has recently started running and doing archery. He’s always happy to pick up new hobbies so he can learn different skills and meet a more diverse group of people. He also enjoys traveling and visiting family in Mexico and Chicago whenever he can.

[wyandottedental-blog]

Meet Dr. Susan J. Cleereman

Susan J. Cleereman, DDS

Dr. Cleereman graduated from the University of Michigan School of Dentistry in 1986. For 23 years, she served in the Michigan Air National Guard. In December 2009, she retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. While she was in the Guard, she went on several humanitarian medical missions to Honduras (three times), Panama, Ghana, Guyana, Latvia, and the Hoopa Indian Reservation in Northern California. 

In 2009, she was awarded the Michigan Dental Association Dentist Citizen of the Year award, as a result of her military humanitarian missions. Dr. Cleereman purchased Wyandotte Family Dental from Dr. Wojewodzic in June 2008. What impressed her most about the office was that the patients were like family. The entire team believes in building relationships with one another and with the patients. This makes dentistry a pleasant and rewarding experience. 

Dr. Cleereman is a member of the American Dental Association, the Michigan Dental Association, the Detroit District Dental Society, Kiwanis Intertnational, and the Packard Club. She lives in Dearborn, Michigan, with her husband, Joel, and “Smokey,” the cat. She lives in a Ford home that was built in 1919. She has four children and 10 grandchildren. In her spare time, she reads, sews, paints, and works on the historic home.

[brightpointedds]

Meet Dr. Michelle Vredenburg

Dr. Vredenburg graduated from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Dentistry with a Doctorate of Dental Surgery in 1989. She completed a general practice residency at Siani Hospital the following year. Dr. Vredenburg is a member of the American and Michigan Dental Associations, Academy of General Dentistry, and the Port Huron Study Club. She is also a member of the dental advisory board at Baker College. Dr. Vredenburg’s four sons, Kyle, Brad, Mitch, and Sean keep her quite busy outside of the office with all of them involved in sports. She enjoys snow skiing, golf, traveling, scuba diving and raising her children.

[deniscollins]

G.M. Workers Say They Sacrificed, and Now They Want Their Due

The United Auto Workers agreed to substantial wage concessions when General Motors was on the verge of bankruptcy 10 years ago. Over the last three years, GM has earned solid profits — it made $35 billion in North America — while closing plants in the United States. Under the contract just ended, workers have gotten a share of G.M.’s profits averaging $11,000 a year over the last three years, and now want an even “fairer” share of profits. If you were a GM executive, how would you determine what are the union workers fair share of profits?

A decade ago, when General Motors was on the brink of collapse and was ushered into bankruptcy by the federal government, the company’s unionized workers bore a significant portion of the pain to bring the automaker back to financial health.

The United Auto Workers agreed to allow General Motors to hire significant numbers of new workers at roughly half the hourly wage of those already on the payroll and with reduced retirement benefits. In the following years, G.M. was also able to bring in temporary workers with even slimmer wage-and-benefit packages and little job security.

The bitter medicine helped reinvigorate the automaker, and for the last several years it has been reaping record profits. Along the way, it has pared its United States payrolls, closed several plants and moved more work to Mexico.

Now nearly 50,000 workers have walked off the job at more than 50 G.M. plants and other locations across the Midwest and South, striking to get what they see as their fair share of the company’s hefty returns and block further erosion of their ranks.

“We have given away so many concessions over the last eight-plus years, and this company has been ridiculously profitable over that time,” said Chaz Akers, 24, an assembler at G.M.’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant, which is set to close in January unless the labor talks can win a reprieve. “That’s why we’re here. We’re fighting to get everything that we lost back.”

The across-the-board strike, the first by the U.A.W. since 2007, began at midnight Sunday, a day after the G.M. contract expired. Industry analysts said the walkout could cost the company tens of millions of dollars a day.

The company had no comment on the talks on Monday but said on Sunday: “We presented a strong offer that improves wages, benefits and grows U.S. jobs in substantive ways, and it is disappointing that the U.A.W. leadership has chosen to strike.”

In negotiations that resumed Monday morning and continued into the evening, the company has offered to invest $7 billion in United States plants and add 5,400 jobs. It also said it was willing to increase pay and benefits, without offering details.

That’s not enough for Wiley Turnage, president of U.A.W. Local 22, who represents the 700 workers at the Hamtramck plant. “I don’t like where we’re at,” he said at the plant’s main gate Monday, a picket sign reading “U.A.W. on Strike” propped on his shoulder. “We need job security. Our plant doesn’t have production beyond January. We have a lot of young, growing families and we need work for them.”

Focusing on a single company is standard practice in the talks between the U.A.W. and the Detroit automakers every four years. And although G.M. has a smaller domestic work force than its American rivals, Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler, it presented an inviting target.

The automaker has earned solid profits — it made $35 billion in North America over the last three years — while closing plants in the United States. Ford, in contrast, canceled plans to build a plant in Mexico, and Fiat Chrysler has announced plans for a new factory in Detroit.

“The U.A.W. is making a significant move here and sending a strong signal that what G.M. has been offering is not acceptable,” said Peter Berg, a labor-relations professor at Michigan State University.

Among autoworkers, there is a strong sense that G.M. is not only making enough profit to increase wages but should be obligated to do so because the federal government rescued the company in 2009.

“We literally gave up a lot during the bankruptcy and the American taxpayer gave up a lot,” said Ashley Scales, 32, a G.M. worker walking the picket line outside the Hamtramck plant’s main gate. “We gave up twice because we pay taxes and we gave up in the contractual agreement. And now the corporation is making more profit than ever and they still want to play games.”

It also does not sit well with workers that G.M. has chosen to make certain vehicles in Mexico rather than in American plants. For example, the new Chevrolet Blazer, a sport utility vehicle that years ago was made in the United States, was assigned to a Mexican plant when it was reintroduced last year.

President Trump, who even before taking office castigated G.M. for shifting production to Mexico, returned to the theme on Monday in comments at the White House. While he said he was “sad to see the strike” and hoped it would be short, he emphasized his relationship with autoworkers, and added: “I don’t want General Motors to be building plants outside of this country. You know they built many plants in China and Mexico, and I don’t like that at all.”

Under the contract just ended, workers have gotten a share of G.M.’s profits averaging $11,000 a year over the last three years. But some contend that the U.A.W. failed to push hard enough as G.M. and the other automakers bounced back over the last decade, including the union’s efforts in the last contract talks four years ago.

“The leadership is feeling some pressure from below to deliver something better than what we got in 2015,” Martha Grevatt, a U.A.W. member who retired from a Fiat Chrysler plant in Michigan earlier this year, said in an interview in August.

After making G.M. its target, the U.A.W. extended its contracts with Ford and Fiat Chrysler. The G.M. outcome is meant to set a pattern for the other companies.

But G.M. is looking to cut costs, or at least avoid cost increases, in a difficult business environment. Auto sales are slowing in the United States and China, the world’s largest and most lucrative markets, and the company is spending billions of dollars to develop electric vehicles and self-driving cars.

It still has room to get leaner. At the end of last year, G.M. had the capacity to make one million more vehicles that it was selling, said Kristin Dziczek, vice president for industry, labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.

To trim capacity, it has closed a small-car plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and components plants in Baltimore and Warren, Mich. The Hamtramck plant makes the Chevrolet Impala and Cadillac CT6, two slow-selling sedans that would need to be retained or replaced to keep the factory running.

Aside from keeping the Hamtramck plant open, the biggest issue for strikers is the tiered wage system, which leaves some workers making significantly less than others for comparable work.

Workers hired before 2007 make about $31 an hour, and can retire with a lifelong pension. Those hired after them (now more than a third of the work force) start at about $17 an hour and can work their way up to about $29 an hour over eight years. They also have to rely on 401(k) retirement accounts instead of pensions.

In addition, G.M. uses temporary workers (about 7 percent of the staff) who earn about $15 an hour, and do not have vision or dental benefits. The system has helped G.M. compete with Toyota, Honda and other foreign automakers operating nonunion plants in Southern states where hourly wages tend to range from $15 to $18 an hour.

But Hamtramck workers said the disparity in compensation under one roof created tension and resentment on the assembly line. “It’s a matter of fairness if someone next to you is making double for the same work,” said Stephanie Brown, 35, a Head Start teacher for 10 years until she took a temp position at G.M. three months ago.

Mr. Akers said he was paid $18 an hour for installing passenger-side headlights, while the driver’s-side headlights were installed by a temporary worker making $3 less.

“That guy has been a temp for two-and-a-half years,” Mr. Akers said. “Is that temporary to you?”

Depending on its length, the strike could have far-reaching effects, potentially hurting some of the thousands of companies that supply G.M. with parts like seats, motors and brake systems, as well as the components that go into those parts.

Other parts of the labor movement may be an asset to the U.A.W. Bret Caldwell, a Teamsters spokesman, said that his union represented about 1,000 drivers who transport G.M. vehicles to dealerships and that their contracts allowed them to avoid crossing a picket line.

Mr. Caldwell said he expected almost all of the car haulers to be idle throughout the strike. “That’ll be a big impact holding up any remaining inventory G.M. has, anything they try to bring in from out of the country,” he said. “It’s the main area of support we’re able to show.”

[mykidstoothdocs]

Best Dentist in Detroit, MI – Megan E. Stowers Pediatric Dentist Choose Megan E. Stowers Pediatric Dentist, recognized as the best dentist in Detroit, MI. Providing expert and compassionate care for children’s dental needs.

[ddsmatchmi]

Dr. Smith had poured her heart and soul into the business and wanted to ensure it would continue thriving under new ownership. She knew the process would be complex and overwhelming, but she was determined to make the transition smooth. Her local DDSmatch Professional helped her organize the steps for a manageable approach to this monumental change in her life.

[smartwebhostingblog]

GM's Use of 3-D Printing Predicts Cheaper, Better Cars

New Post has been published on http://croopdiseno.com/gms-use-of-3-d-printing-predicts-cheaper-better-cars/

GM's Use of 3-D Printing Predicts Cheaper, Better Cars

The first thing that hits you, the signal that this drab Michigan office building is a bit cooler than the average, is the smell. The acrid, metallic, plasticky, burning smell, the sort of odor that prompts the question: Is something that is really not supposed to be on fire on fire in here?

No, no, says Dave Bolognino, who heads up General Motors’ design fabrication division. That’s just the byproduct of 3-D printing. In a changing auto industry, this is what innovation (“rapid iteration” in business speak) smells like. And that smell might be wafting to other parts of the company.

About 30,000 prototype parts get printed each year here at the Warren Tech Center, the sprawling, suburban home to many of the carmaker’s research and development efforts, which hosts over 20,000 GM employees. These parts are fabricated out of at least nine sorts of materials—combinations of plastics and metal and powders—and are used, mostly, for rapid prototyping, for those who want to quickly visualize or understand what a new sort of auto part or configuration would look like. That’s nothing new: GM has been 3D printing prototypes for three decades, starting under the eye of Bolognino’s father John, now retired in his late 70s.

Today, specially trained workers run the printing machines six days a week, three shifts a day, a constant churn of popping parts out of molds and watching conglomerates emerge from powders and liquid resins. There’s no real limit to what employees can dream up and print out, says Bolognino, standing in front of a series of shelves filled with grayish mini-bumpers, wheels, and unidentifiable plastic squares cooling just off the printing machines. Though there is a limit on what they will print. A design team once asked for plastic Coke bottle, to use in a model cup holder. “Here’s a dollar fifty,” Bolognino told them. “Go buy one.”

3-D printing, aka additive manufacturing, ain’t new at all, but you’ll see it now in more consumer products than ever before. Folks making shoes, dental implants, hearing aids, and even jet engine use printed parts. The Obama administration helped launch the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute back in 2012, a $70 million consortium of businesses and universities dedicated to coming up with new ways to use additive manufacturing to boost American business. The process allows these industries to craft oddly-shaped parts more quickly and with more flexibility than they did in the past.

And outside GM’s malodorous workshop, 3-D printing is poised to become an even more vital part of the automotive manufacturing process. Carmakers like the Detroit giant are thinking about ways they can fold the process into actual production vehicles, the kind real people drive around every day.

“The auto industry has been leading in the use of additive manufacturing for 30 years in the prototyping space,” says Mark Cotteleer, who heads up the consulting firm Deloitte’s Center for Integrated Research and has studied additive manufacturing for last five years. “We’re seeing them start to move into part production in limited ways, primarily at lower volumes.”

In May, GM unveiled its a bid to shoehorn more printing into carmaking. The result is—wait for it—a stainless steel seat bracket. A very, very weird looking seat bracket. Not that any car owners will ever see it.

Generally, building this sort of bracket, which provides a steely, firm base for a car’s seats and seat belt buckles, requires about eight separate parts, purchased from several different automotive suppliers. This new, bizarre one is one continuous component, with each curving tendril serving a specific stabilizing purpose. As a result, it’s 40 percent lighter and 20 percent stronger than the standard, GM says. For automakers who like to entice consumers with promises of faster vehicles with higher gas mileage, this kind of incremental lightweighting is a path to market domination.

A worker completes a 3-D printed prototype at General Motors’ Warren Tech Center, the automakers’ Detroit-area research and development campus.

General Motors

GM created the seat bracket as a demo project in partnership with Autodesk, the San Francisco design and engineering software firm, which has an engineer constantly embedded with the carmaker’s design team in Michigan. Autodesk’s tech helps the GM designers input parameters—materials, need-to-have elements like holes for screws, cost, object stiffness, mass—to come up with inventive new ways to put parts together. The result is something Salvador Dalí might have dreamed up. Print it off in steel, et voila: a new approach to keeping everybody buckled in.

Now, these sorts of seat brackets won’t make it into production cars just yet. The cost of additive manufacturing has come way down in the past few decades, but it’s not yet cheap enough for mass manufacturing. Printing is still too slow for a company that makes more than 8,000 vehicles a day. And integrating the process into the production line is no easy thing. “It’s not about just buying a 3-D printer, says Cotteleer. “For industrial-scale printing, there needs to be a whole digital backbone to send files to where they need to be. And what’s that model going to be?”

Stil, GM sees great promise in things like wacky seat brackets. “There are 30,000 parts and pieces on each of our vehicles,” says Kevin Quinn, the automaker’s director of additive design and manufacturing. “A realistic change is maybe 100 or 1,000 pieces have a chance to be printed. Five years from now, could that number raise to 5,000? Ten years from now, to 10,000?” The result might be a prettier, more material-efficient, lighter, faster car.

In the meantime, GM says it will also use additive manufacturing to create unique tools used during automotive production, or to customize slick decorative elements for one-off buyers. (Monogrammed grilles, anyone?)

Of course, don’t expect entire cars to be printed anytime soon. “This is not a panacea,” says Cotteleer, explaining that a completely 3-D printed car would make no financial sense. But it’s nothing for carmakers to turn their nose up at, either.

More Great WIRED Stories

[hostingnewsfeed]

GM's Use of 3-D Printing Predicts Cheaper, Better Cars

New Post has been published on http://businesswebhostingproviders.com/gms-use-of-3-d-printing-predicts-cheaper-better-cars/

GM's Use of 3-D Printing Predicts Cheaper, Better Cars

The first thing that hits you, the signal that this drab Michigan office building is a bit cooler than the average, is the smell. The acrid, metallic, plasticky, burning smell, the sort of odor that prompts the question: Is something that is really not supposed to be on fire on fire in here?

No, no, says Dave Bolognino, who heads up General Motors’ design fabrication division. That’s just the byproduct of 3-D printing. In a changing auto industry, this is what innovation (“rapid iteration” in business speak) smells like. And that smell might be wafting to other parts of the company.

About 30,000 prototype parts get printed each year here at the Warren Tech Center, the sprawling, suburban home to many of the carmaker’s research and development efforts, which hosts over 20,000 GM employees. These parts are fabricated out of at least nine sorts of materials—combinations of plastics and metal and powders—and are used, mostly, for rapid prototyping, for those who want to quickly visualize or understand what a new sort of auto part or configuration would look like. That’s nothing new: GM has been 3D printing prototypes for three decades, starting under the eye of Bolognino’s father John, now retired in his late 70s.

Today, specially trained workers run the printing machines six days a week, three shifts a day, a constant churn of popping parts out of molds and watching conglomerates emerge from powders and liquid resins. There’s no real limit to what employees can dream up and print out, says Bolognino, standing in front of a series of shelves filled with grayish mini-bumpers, wheels, and unidentifiable plastic squares cooling just off the printing machines. Though there is a limit on what they will print. A design team once asked for plastic Coke bottle, to use in a model cup holder. “Here’s a dollar fifty,” Bolognino told them. “Go buy one.”

3-D printing, aka additive manufacturing, ain’t new at all, but you’ll see it now in more consumer products than ever before. Folks making shoes, dental implants, hearing aids, and even jet engine use printed parts. The Obama administration helped launch the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute back in 2012, a $70 million consortium of businesses and universities dedicated to coming up with new ways to use additive manufacturing to boost American business. The process allows these industries to craft oddly-shaped parts more quickly and with more flexibility than they did in the past.

And outside GM’s malodorous workshop, 3-D printing is poised to become an even more vital part of the automotive manufacturing process. Carmakers like the Detroit giant are thinking about ways they can fold the process into actual production vehicles, the kind real people drive around every day.

“The auto industry has been leading in the use of additive manufacturing for 30 years in the prototyping space,” says Mark Cotteleer, who heads up the consulting firm Deloitte’s Center for Integrated Research and has studied additive manufacturing for last five years. “We’re seeing them start to move into part production in limited ways, primarily at lower volumes.”

In May, GM unveiled its a bid to shoehorn more printing into carmaking. The result is—wait for it—a stainless steel seat bracket. A very, very weird looking seat bracket. Not that any car owners will ever see it.

Generally, building this sort of bracket, which provides a steely, firm base for a car’s seats and seat belt buckles, requires about eight separate parts, purchased from several different automotive suppliers. This new, bizarre one is one continuous component, with each curving tendril serving a specific stabilizing purpose. As a result, it’s 40 percent lighter and 20 percent stronger than the standard, GM says. For automakers who like to entice consumers with promises of faster vehicles with higher gas mileage, this kind of incremental lightweighting is a path to market domination.

A worker completes a 3-D printed prototype at General Motors’ Warren Tech Center, the automakers’ Detroit-area research and development campus.

General Motors

GM created the seat bracket as a demo project in partnership with Autodesk, the San Francisco design and engineering software firm, which has an engineer constantly embedded with the carmaker’s design team in Michigan. Autodesk’s tech helps the GM designers input parameters—materials, need-to-have elements like holes for screws, cost, object stiffness, mass—to come up with inventive new ways to put parts together. The result is something Salvador Dalí might have dreamed up. Print it off in steel, et voila: a new approach to keeping everybody buckled in.

Now, these sorts of seat brackets won’t make it into production cars just yet. The cost of additive manufacturing has come way down in the past few decades, but it’s not yet cheap enough for mass manufacturing. Printing is still too slow for a company that makes more than 8,000 vehicles a day. And integrating the process into the production line is no easy thing. “It’s not about just buying a 3-D printer, says Cotteleer. “For industrial-scale printing, there needs to be a whole digital backbone to send files to where they need to be. And what’s that model going to be?”

Stil, GM sees great promise in things like wacky seat brackets. “There are 30,000 parts and pieces on each of our vehicles,” says Kevin Quinn, the automaker’s director of additive design and manufacturing. “A realistic change is maybe 100 or 1,000 pieces have a chance to be printed. Five years from now, could that number raise to 5,000? Ten years from now, to 10,000?” The result might be a prettier, more material-efficient, lighter, faster car.

In the meantime, GM says it will also use additive manufacturing to create unique tools used during automotive production, or to customize slick decorative elements for one-off buyers. (Monogrammed grilles, anyone?)

Of course, don’t expect entire cars to be printed anytime soon. “This is not a panacea,” says Cotteleer, explaining that a completely 3-D printed car would make no financial sense. But it’s nothing for carmakers to turn their nose up at, either.

More Great WIRED Stories

[lazilysillyprince]

GM's Use of 3-D Printing Predicts Cheaper, Better Cars

New Post has been published on http://businesswebhostingproviders.com/gms-use-of-3-d-printing-predicts-cheaper-better-cars/

GM's Use of 3-D Printing Predicts Cheaper, Better Cars

The first thing that hits you, the signal that this drab Michigan office building is a bit cooler than the average, is the smell. The acrid, metallic, plasticky, burning smell, the sort of odor that prompts the question: Is something that is really not supposed to be on fire on fire in here?

No, no, says Dave Bolognino, who heads up General Motors’ design fabrication division. That’s just the byproduct of 3-D printing. In a changing auto industry, this is what innovation (“rapid iteration” in business speak) smells like. And that smell might be wafting to other parts of the company.

About 30,000 prototype parts get printed each year here at the Warren Tech Center, the sprawling, suburban home to many of the carmaker’s research and development efforts, which hosts over 20,000 GM employees. These parts are fabricated out of at least nine sorts of materials—combinations of plastics and metal and powders—and are used, mostly, for rapid prototyping, for those who want to quickly visualize or understand what a new sort of auto part or configuration would look like. That’s nothing new: GM has been 3D printing prototypes for three decades, starting under the eye of Bolognino’s father John, now retired in his late 70s.

Today, specially trained workers run the printing machines six days a week, three shifts a day, a constant churn of popping parts out of molds and watching conglomerates emerge from powders and liquid resins. There’s no real limit to what employees can dream up and print out, says Bolognino, standing in front of a series of shelves filled with grayish mini-bumpers, wheels, and unidentifiable plastic squares cooling just off the printing machines. Though there is a limit on what they will print. A design team once asked for plastic Coke bottle, to use in a model cup holder. “Here’s a dollar fifty,” Bolognino told them. “Go buy one.”

3-D printing, aka additive manufacturing, ain’t new at all, but you’ll see it now in more consumer products than ever before. Folks making shoes, dental implants, hearing aids, and even jet engine use printed parts. The Obama administration helped launch the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute back in 2012, a $70 million consortium of businesses and universities dedicated to coming up with new ways to use additive manufacturing to boost American business. The process allows these industries to craft oddly-shaped parts more quickly and with more flexibility than they did in the past.

And outside GM’s malodorous workshop, 3-D printing is poised to become an even more vital part of the automotive manufacturing process. Carmakers like the Detroit giant are thinking about ways they can fold the process into actual production vehicles, the kind real people drive around every day.

“The auto industry has been leading in the use of additive manufacturing for 30 years in the prototyping space,” says Mark Cotteleer, who heads up the consulting firm Deloitte’s Center for Integrated Research and has studied additive manufacturing for last five years. “We’re seeing them start to move into part production in limited ways, primarily at lower volumes.”

In May, GM unveiled its a bid to shoehorn more printing into carmaking. The result is—wait for it—a stainless steel seat bracket. A very, very weird looking seat bracket. Not that any car owners will ever see it.

Generally, building this sort of bracket, which provides a steely, firm base for a car’s seats and seat belt buckles, requires about eight separate parts, purchased from several different automotive suppliers. This new, bizarre one is one continuous component, with each curving tendril serving a specific stabilizing purpose. As a result, it’s 40 percent lighter and 20 percent stronger than the standard, GM says. For automakers who like to entice consumers with promises of faster vehicles with higher gas mileage, this kind of incremental lightweighting is a path to market domination.

A worker completes a 3-D printed prototype at General Motors’ Warren Tech Center, the automakers’ Detroit-area research and development campus.

General Motors

GM created the seat bracket as a demo project in partnership with Autodesk, the San Francisco design and engineering software firm, which has an engineer constantly embedded with the carmaker’s design team in Michigan. Autodesk’s tech helps the GM designers input parameters—materials, need-to-have elements like holes for screws, cost, object stiffness, mass—to come up with inventive new ways to put parts together. The result is something Salvador Dalí might have dreamed up. Print it off in steel, et voila: a new approach to keeping everybody buckled in.

Now, these sorts of seat brackets won’t make it into production cars just yet. The cost of additive manufacturing has come way down in the past few decades, but it’s not yet cheap enough for mass manufacturing. Printing is still too slow for a company that makes more than 8,000 vehicles a day. And integrating the process into the production line is no easy thing. “It’s not about just buying a 3-D printer, says Cotteleer. “For industrial-scale printing, there needs to be a whole digital backbone to send files to where they need to be. And what’s that model going to be?”

Stil, GM sees great promise in things like wacky seat brackets. “There are 30,000 parts and pieces on each of our vehicles,” says Kevin Quinn, the automaker’s director of additive design and manufacturing. “A realistic change is maybe 100 or 1,000 pieces have a chance to be printed. Five years from now, could that number raise to 5,000? Ten years from now, to 10,000?” The result might be a prettier, more material-efficient, lighter, faster car.

In the meantime, GM says it will also use additive manufacturing to create unique tools used during automotive production, or to customize slick decorative elements for one-off buyers. (Monogrammed grilles, anyone?)

Of course, don’t expect entire cars to be printed anytime soon. “This is not a panacea,” says Cotteleer, explaining that a completely 3-D printed car would make no financial sense. But it’s nothing for carmakers to turn their nose up at, either.

More Great WIRED Stories

[awesomecolorfulcollectorwombat]

GM's Use of 3-D Printing Predicts Cheaper, Better Cars

New Post has been published on http://businesswebhostingproviders.com/gms-use-of-3-d-printing-predicts-cheaper-better-cars/

GM's Use of 3-D Printing Predicts Cheaper, Better Cars

The first thing that hits you, the signal that this drab Michigan office building is a bit cooler than the average, is the smell. The acrid, metallic, plasticky, burning smell, the sort of odor that prompts the question: Is something that is really not supposed to be on fire on fire in here?

No, no, says Dave Bolognino, who heads up General Motors’ design fabrication division. That’s just the byproduct of 3-D printing. In a changing auto industry, this is what innovation (“rapid iteration” in business speak) smells like. And that smell might be wafting to other parts of the company.

About 30,000 prototype parts get printed each year here at the Warren Tech Center, the sprawling, suburban home to many of the carmaker’s research and development efforts, which hosts over 20,000 GM employees. These parts are fabricated out of at least nine sorts of materials—combinations of plastics and metal and powders—and are used, mostly, for rapid prototyping, for those who want to quickly visualize or understand what a new sort of auto part or configuration would look like. That’s nothing new: GM has been 3D printing prototypes for three decades, starting under the eye of Bolognino’s father John, now retired in his late 70s.

Today, specially trained workers run the printing machines six days a week, three shifts a day, a constant churn of popping parts out of molds and watching conglomerates emerge from powders and liquid resins. There’s no real limit to what employees can dream up and print out, says Bolognino, standing in front of a series of shelves filled with grayish mini-bumpers, wheels, and unidentifiable plastic squares cooling just off the printing machines. Though there is a limit on what they will print. A design team once asked for plastic Coke bottle, to use in a model cup holder. “Here’s a dollar fifty,” Bolognino told them. “Go buy one.”

3-D printing, aka additive manufacturing, ain’t new at all, but you’ll see it now in more consumer products than ever before. Folks making shoes, dental implants, hearing aids, and even jet engine use printed parts. The Obama administration helped launch the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute back in 2012, a $70 million consortium of businesses and universities dedicated to coming up with new ways to use additive manufacturing to boost American business. The process allows these industries to craft oddly-shaped parts more quickly and with more flexibility than they did in the past.

And outside GM’s malodorous workshop, 3-D printing is poised to become an even more vital part of the automotive manufacturing process. Carmakers like the Detroit giant are thinking about ways they can fold the process into actual production vehicles, the kind real people drive around every day.

“The auto industry has been leading in the use of additive manufacturing for 30 years in the prototyping space,” says Mark Cotteleer, who heads up the consulting firm Deloitte’s Center for Integrated Research and has studied additive manufacturing for last five years. “We’re seeing them start to move into part production in limited ways, primarily at lower volumes.”

In May, GM unveiled its a bid to shoehorn more printing into carmaking. The result is—wait for it—a stainless steel seat bracket. A very, very weird looking seat bracket. Not that any car owners will ever see it.

Generally, building this sort of bracket, which provides a steely, firm base for a car’s seats and seat belt buckles, requires about eight separate parts, purchased from several different automotive suppliers. This new, bizarre one is one continuous component, with each curving tendril serving a specific stabilizing purpose. As a result, it’s 40 percent lighter and 20 percent stronger than the standard, GM says. For automakers who like to entice consumers with promises of faster vehicles with higher gas mileage, this kind of incremental lightweighting is a path to market domination.

A worker completes a 3-D printed prototype at General Motors’ Warren Tech Center, the automakers’ Detroit-area research and development campus.

General Motors

GM created the seat bracket as a demo project in partnership with Autodesk, the San Francisco design and engineering software firm, which has an engineer constantly embedded with the carmaker’s design team in Michigan. Autodesk’s tech helps the GM designers input parameters—materials, need-to-have elements like holes for screws, cost, object stiffness, mass—to come up with inventive new ways to put parts together. The result is something Salvador Dalí might have dreamed up. Print it off in steel, et voila: a new approach to keeping everybody buckled in.

Now, these sorts of seat brackets won’t make it into production cars just yet. The cost of additive manufacturing has come way down in the past few decades, but it’s not yet cheap enough for mass manufacturing. Printing is still too slow for a company that makes more than 8,000 vehicles a day. And integrating the process into the production line is no easy thing. “It’s not about just buying a 3-D printer, says Cotteleer. “For industrial-scale printing, there needs to be a whole digital backbone to send files to where they need to be. And what’s that model going to be?”

Stil, GM sees great promise in things like wacky seat brackets. “There are 30,000 parts and pieces on each of our vehicles,” says Kevin Quinn, the automaker’s director of additive design and manufacturing. “A realistic change is maybe 100 or 1,000 pieces have a chance to be printed. Five years from now, could that number raise to 5,000? Ten years from now, to 10,000?” The result might be a prettier, more material-efficient, lighter, faster car.

In the meantime, GM says it will also use additive manufacturing to create unique tools used during automotive production, or to customize slick decorative elements for one-off buyers. (Monogrammed grilles, anyone?)

Of course, don’t expect entire cars to be printed anytime soon. “This is not a panacea,” says Cotteleer, explaining that a completely 3-D printed car would make no financial sense. But it’s nothing for carmakers to turn their nose up at, either.

More Great WIRED Stories

[mickibastow0-blog]

Self Remodeling Internet Site Directory Site

I cannot aid however experience a little sick when I observe ladies as young as four years old dressed like adults completely makeup, adult clothing as well as heels. That an individual needs to put on nappies to bedroom is simply a component of which that individual is actually. An individual's self-worth need to be gauged due to the determination they show in taking care of lifestyle's difficulties and how properly they manage other individuals. Stories in this particular season consisted of a noticeable citizen being actually slaughtered due to sexual assault as well as incest in his family members; Virgil's ex-partner as well as Althea's ex-lover (Michael Warren coming from Hill Road Woe) coming to check out for a reunion that no one would certainly ever before fail to remember; Main Gillespie's must encounter his very own bigoted past times when he imprisons a friend (played through Ed Ames) (who is actually likewise the officer from the bordering region) for committing a racially enthusiastic murder; Bubba's acquiring caught up in a murderous passion triangle; Althea's daughter "Nicole" visiting, and along with new pal "Bobby Skinner" (Bubba's nephew) coming across criminal misconduct in the episode "City Computer mouse Country Mouse". Some grownups that experience after dark enuresis have never ever totally outgrown this. Baseding on a September 2013 report in "Existing Sac Dysfunction Documents," a lot of the scenarios of grown-up enuresis that have persisted considering that childhood years, or even repeated in the grown-up years, relate to raised pee creation at night or even an overactive Highly recommended Resource site bladder, rather than a bodily complications such as an impediment. Equally the house and family served as essential domains through which Panthers planted a consolidated Black physical body politic dead set on the crush from commercialism, so also performed the state acknowledge these rooms as important to its personal schedule of annihilating the association. Very early procedure in little ones is also much better in comparison to addressing grownups, considering that the teeth in an adult are set, while the little one's dental components are actually still under formation. Today, BMI is actually an usual health and wellness testing strategy for grownups and also youngsters. Nevertheless, the Kalamazoo River, which passes through the contemporary city from Kalamazoo, was found on the route in between Detroit and also Fort Saint-Joseph (nowadays Niles, Michigan ). French-Canadian traders, missionaries, and armed forces personnel were actually fairly accustomed to this area in the course of the French time and also thereafter.

Nonetheless, moms and dads need to definitely first assess their kid for the indicators from stress to stay away from over-helping. 11 Usually the planter course tapped the services of instructors for the learning from their kids or delivered all of them to independent schools. I seem like I am going to permanently be actually developmentally responsible for my peers at this rate, due to overprotective moms and dads that created me concentrate only on researches as well as did not permit me to experience my young people when I was implied to. Today it's late - if I head out right now and also aim to experience everything I should possess when I was an adolescent, ONE this is going to only appear depressing, as well as 2 I'll simply be actually postponing exactly what I am actually suggested to become carrying out at my present age - which, in your late Twenties is actually typically meant to become getting in a long-term relationship, getting married (or maybe possessing kids!), possessing a secure full-time work, etc Every single time she began to have her concern back, she advised herself that only for today her relatived was actually being handled. However, this exemption from supplying health and wellness particulars would only administer up to a certain amount of boosted coverage. Life style associated characteristic affect every choice one makes coming from profession selections to social partnerships. These individuals are actually normally certainly not paedophiles consequently they don't possess a specific sexual orientation for little ones. As an example, guys often tend to be actually taller in comparison to ladies, however there are lots of folks of each sexes who are in the mid-height variety for the species.

[cirilwilliams]

Normal Hours to Serve your Emergency Patients During This COVID-19

We wanted to let you know how we are planning on resuming normal hours of operation for emergency cases until the Michigan Executive order is lifted.

Drs. Panek and Pisano have been designing and implementing environmental engineering controls for added safety.

PPE is in short supply and Drs. Noordhoek and Van Heukelom have been sourcing specialized PPE and reviewing Telemedicine options to keep our patients and staff safe.

Dr. Billups spearheaded a donation initiative thru the Michigan Society of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons 2 weeks ago. A major Detroit hospital was short of sedative drugs necessary to maintain life supporting ventilation of COVID-19 patients. Our practice, along with others in the Detroit area, donated needed drugs. We also contributed to the West Michigan District Dental Society sponsored PPE donation program for Spectrum Health.

All this while our doctors were treating emergency referrals in the Grand Rapids office. During this time we were also providing on-call inpatient hospital oral & maxillofacial surgical care for facial trauma and dental infection patients at Mercy Health Saint Mary’s Hospital.

Details regarding our preparations, along with resources you can use, are found below.

So how do we decrease risk of COVID exposure?

When we went to limited hours due to the Governor’s stay at home order, it was necessary to rethink use of PPE and Engineering Controls. During the pandemic, every patient seen must be treated as if they were COVID positive. It is estimated that 3-5% of our patients may be infected with Corona virus and can be asymptomatic for 2-5 days before feeling ill.

Read more: https://www.grandrapidsoralsurgery.com/blog/normal-hours-to-serve-your-emergency-patients/

[deniscollins]

Workers Fearful of the Coronavirus Are Getting Fired and Losing Their Benefits

Assume you own a tea shop in a college town and want to reopen for business next week. Six employees collecting unemployment refuse to come back to work because they fear contracting COVID-19. As the tea shop owner, you try to accommodate employees’ safety concerns by limiting customers in the store, installing a sneeze guard at the cash register, requiring masks and halting tea services and free samples of their teas. What would you do if the employees still refuse to come back due to their virus fears: (1) hire new employees and end unemployment benefits for those who refused to come back to work, (2) make other accommodations for these six employees, or (3) something else, if so, what? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

After scraping by for weeks on unemployment checks and peanut butter sandwiches, Jake Lyon recently received the call that many who temporarily lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic have anticipated: The college-town tea shop where he worked was reopening, and it was time to go back.

But Mr. Lyon, 23, and his co-workers in Fort Collins, Colo., who were temporarily laid off, worried about contracting the virus, so they asked the shop’s owners to delay reopening and meet with them to discuss safety measures. The reluctance cost them. Six of them permanently lost their jobs in May, and their former employer reported them to the state’s unemployment office to have their benefits potentially revoked.

“You have all refused to go back to work,” their former boss wrote in an email.

As people across the United States are told to return to work, employees who balk at the health risks say they are being confronted with painful reprisals: Some are losing their jobs if they try to stay home, and thousands more are being reported to the state to have their unemployment benefits cut off.

The coronavirus pandemic continues to strain the economy. On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that 1.9 million Americans filed new claims for state unemployment insurance last week. Businesses want to bring back customers and profits. But workers now worry about contracting the coronavirus once they return to cramped restaurant kitchens, dental offices or conference rooms where few colleagues are wearing masks.

Some states with a history of weaker labor protections are encouraging employers to report workers who do not return to their jobs, citing state laws that disqualify people from receiving unemployment checks if they refuse a reasonable offer of work.

Oklahoma set up a “Return To Work” email address for businesses to report employees who turn down jobs. Ohio offered a similar way for employers to report coronavirus-related work refusals.

Labor advocates and unions say the push to recall workers and kick reluctant employees off unemployment benefits carries grave risks in an age of coronavirus, when infections have rampaged through meatpacking plants, call centers, factories and other confined spaces where co-workers spend hours touching the same surfaces and breathing the same air.

“Their choices are: ‘Do I go back and risk my life, or say no and risk being kicked off unemployment and not be able to pay my bills?’” said Rachel Bussett, an employment lawyer in Oklahoma, where 179 businesses have reported workers to the unemployment agency.

Alabama, Oklahoma and South Carolina are among several states that have told workers they cannot continue to collect unemployment if they turn down a suitable job offer. Missouri has received 982 reports of workers refusing to return to their jobs.

In Tennessee, where 735 workers have been reported for refusing to return to work, the state labor commissioner announced that the fear of contracting the coronavirus was not a good enough excuse to not go back. To continue to qualify for unemployment, workers need to be directly affected by the virus: They must have a diagnosed case of Covid-19, be caring for a patient or be confined by a quarantine, among other reasons outlined by Congress in the coronavirus stimulus law that was passed in March.

The question has split along partisan lines, with some Republican politicians and business owners complaining that furloughed workers have little incentive to go back to work if they are earning more from the emergency aid passed by Congress.

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, recently told a Senate panel that workers who turned down their old jobs could be ineligible for unemployment payments. But Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor took a different view, saying that workers should refuse to go back to jobs they consider unsafe.

“This is uncharted waters,” said Kersha Cartwright, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Labor, which has encouraged businesses to work with employees on reopening plans after the state became one of the first in the country to forge ahead with reopening.

In interviews across the country, workers said they were anxious to keep their jobs at a time when the economic devastation of the coronavirus has left more than 40 million in the country out of work. With the job market bleak and many family members unemployed, many people said they felt powerless to refuse an order to return to work or question the safety practices at their jobs.

In the tea shop case, Mr. Lyon lost his unemployment benefits after his former bosses reported him to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. The state agency ruled that Mr. Lyon’s work “did not present an unacceptable risk” to his health, and disqualified him from unemployment for 20 weeks.

“What we’re asking for is so basic during an unprecedented global pandemic,” Mr. Lyon said.

But Qin Liu, who owns the tea shop, the Ku Cha House of Tea, with his wife, said they had tried to accommodate their employees’ safety concerns by limiting customers in the store, installing a sneeze guard at the cash register, requiring masks and halting tea services and free samples of their teas. But he said his business would founder if it stayed closed until there was a vaccine or cure.

“They wanted to wait a little bit longer till the danger has passed,” Mr. Liu said. “But for us, a small business, the danger is imminent.”

Mr. Liu said the business was also obligated under Colorado labor laws to notify the state when they dismissed the six workers, inciting the unemployment investigation.

In Toledo, Ohio, Stephanie VanSlambrouck, 45, said she urged her husband to quit when he was called back to his job as a steel fabricator after weeks of working from home. He reads blueprints and pores over figures all day, and has little need to go into the office, Ms. VanSlambrouck said.

But the couple have three children, and had already lost their home to foreclosure once, after the 2008 housing crash. So now, her husband eats lunch at his desk, sanitizes his hands and wears a mask to the Monday morning planning meetings in the small conference room.

“We’re caught,” Ms. VanSlambrouck said. “We have to do what our bosses are telling us. And to quit a job in this uncertain time would be ridiculous. You can’t walk away from something that’s providing food for the family because who knows what’s going to happen in a week?”

Mark Adani, a car salesman in suburban Detroit, spent weeks working from home to avoid the coronavirus. He is 71 and has high blood pressure and a wife with heart trouble. But he recently got an ultimatum from his dealership: Come back to the office or consider a new job.

“I’m damned if I come to work, damned if I don’t come to work,” he said.

Mr. Adani said one worker had already died of Covid-19, and he flirted with letting his bosses dismiss him when he was called back to the office.

Ultimately, he decided to go back. He was unable to reach anyone from Michigan’s overwhelmed unemployment system to answer whether he could refuse to go back and still retain his benefits.

With customers scarce, Mr. Adani said he spent much of the day at his desk, chasing online leads and worrying about bringing home the virus to his wife. Most of his co-workers slip on masks when they head to the break room for coffee.

“I really don’t feel this place is safe,” Mr. Adani said.

Nurses, grocery store workers, fast-food cashiers, slaughterhouse workers and others deemed “essential” have been navigating these fears throughout the pandemic because they never stopped working. Now, the concern is spreading to wider areas of the economy.

In Boise, Idaho, Robin Slater, a 65-year-old line cook with chronic shortness of breath from 40 years of smoking, said he was reluctant to answer the call back to work at the sports bar where he constantly bumps up against other cooks in the tiny kitchen. He said he was the only one who wore a mask. The plan, he said, was to limit tables to six people or fewer, though a party of 14 came in to eat last Sunday.

Mr. Slater said he had little choice other than returning to work because he was almost certain to lose his $220 in weekly unemployment, supplemented by the $600 passed as part of the coronavirus relief bill. So far, 147 workers in Idaho have been reported as refusing to work, though the state did not say how many had lost benefits.

Mr. Slater’s uneasiness has not gone away after his first few shifts, though few others at work seem bothered.

“Most of our servers and cooks are in their 20s and 30s,” Mr. Slater said. “They’re all like, ‘It doesn’t really matter.’ But I don’t want to go back to work and die.”