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END USER: Niagara Gear Division of Gear Motions Inc., (716) 874-3131, www.gearmotions.com/locations/niagara-gear-division. CHALLENGE: Reduce lead times and enhance flexibility and control to meet customer delivery requirements. SOLUTION: A work cell with a vertical machining center, two turning centers, a saw and a parts-marking machine that the company set up after initially purchasing the VMC and then acquiring the rest of the equipment from a machine shop that closed.

Nowhere will you find more gold — i.e., profits — than by streamlining redundant or antiquated plant operations, according to Phillip Canipe, whose job it is to eliminate waste and redundancy at manufacturing plants.

At Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Americas Inc., holemaking success is about timing—finding the best sequence in which to perform manufacturing operations.

What would cause parts manufacturers not to want to extend tool life, increase speeds and feeds, enhance chip evacuation to avoid recutting, impart finer surface finishes and eliminate pecking when deep-hole drilling? Apparently, ignorance in the marketplace.

Visioneering Inc. employees stay ready to adapt to change as the Auburn Hills, Mich., aerospace supplier opens a new facility and adopts a new way to apply coolant.

Today's machine tool users have more spindle choices than just the steep-taper designs developed 40 years ago.n

How do you treat your a customer who received an order and has a problem with it? Maybe you shipped the wrong part or made a part according to an old revision. How do you handle the situation and appease the customer?

Thinking of purchasing shop floor control software but don't know where to start? You might want to start by brushing up on the relevant jargon.

Many machinists fondly remember their early training or apprenticeships when they made 1-2-3 blocks from scratch under the watchful eye of a master toolmaker. These young machinists carefully machined the blocks oversize, heat-treated them and then ground them to size. They quickly learned that precisely holding size and geometric features to close limits is more challenging than it seems at first glance.

When CNC milling machines were conceived some in the metalworking industry asked why a computer couldn't also manage tool changes. That question was the impetus behind the development of the automatic toolchanger.

Keith Jennings, who writes the Manager's Desk column for Cutting Tool Engineering, never experienced being sad and mad at the same time until recently, according to his September column. The cause? A trusted employee who wasn't so trustworthy.

Many — if not most — shops encourage employees to purchase their own measurement tools. Some even help by "financing" these purchases, allowing machinists to pay them off in small increments. And what machinist doesn't want his or her "own stuff" with which to do the job? But does allowing machinists to use their own measuring tools actually make sense?