Articles & Columns

Everyone crashes, I was once told. It’s likely true. However, not all crashes are created equal. There are fender benders that just break small tools, and then there are head-on collisions that ruin much more—including your day. CNC machine crashes are relatively easy to avoid. They often occur during setup and debugging. If you can recognize high-risk situations, you’ll be in a better position to avoid them.

Specifications for particulate and film-residue cleanliness are a matter of course for many machined components. In addition to the parts cleaning procedure, manufacturers must consider the entire process chain when seeking to efficiently achieve and maintain the required level of cleanliness.

Ask the Grinding Doc: When I ran out of single-point dressing diamonds and got desperate, I mounted a PCD insert to dress an Al2O3 wheel. Is there any danger in doing that?

Multiple machine tool builders offer equipment for machining the helicopter transmission components Northstar Aerospace Inc. produces at its Bedford Park, Ill., facility, but not all are equally efficient in handling the task. The parts weigh up to 350 lbs. (159 kg), have diameter tolerances as tight as 0.0003" (0.0076mm) and are made of aerospace-grade superalloys typically hardened from 50 to 60 HRC, said Brian Cheek, vice president and general manager at Northstar.

Researchers at North Carolina State University reported the discovery of a distinct form of solid carbon they estimate is about 10 percent harder than diamond and could play an important role in machining. They also claim to have developed a relatively inexpensive technique for producing the substance, called Q-carbon, at room temperature and ambient atmospheric pressure.

Cutting external threads is one of the more difficult machining operations. Achieving the proper thread form can be challenging, and tool chipping and premature tool wear are often problematic because of insufficient surface speeds and high cutting pressures. 

At roughly twice the price of a vertical machining center, do horizontal machining centers make sound financial sense? Absolutely, according to Scott Baldus, product specialist at Okuma America Corp. The Charlotte, N.C., machine builder offers both VMCs and HMCs, yet, Baldus noted, HMCs provide, on average, more than three times the spindle utilization of VMCs. 

Additive and subtractive manufacturing may be conceptual opposites, but a new partnership aims to show that the two can make a good team. Two of the partners are New York organizations: the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and Elmira-based Hardinge Inc. RIT researchers are incorporating additive-manufacturing capabilities into Hardinge’s Bridgeport GX 250 5-axis vertical machining center. The goal is to create a hybrid manufacturing system capable of producing more accurate parts at a lower cost than conventional manufacturing methods.

While it’s nearly impossible to quantify the most common challenges or most important considerations when turning, experts agree that the five aspects of turning discussed below should be considered. It’s important to note that each factor has the potential to impact the others. So, instead of looking at each issue individually, it’s recommended machinists take a holistic best-practices approach to turning.

Technological advances in cutting tools, machine tools and toolholders have allowed machinists and manufacturing engineers to increase holemaking efficiency by eliminating the number of tools required to produce accurate holes. High-performance drills are the best example of these technological advances. In the past, it was common for a machinist to spot-drill, drill and then ream to achieve accurate hole geometry. Now, the same hole can be made in a single operation using a high-performance drill. 

We at Cutting Tool Engineering celebrated the New Year by unveiling a major overhaul to the design and functionality of our website, ctemag.com. Sporting a bright new design with larger text and images, ctemag.com is not only easier on the eyes, it’s also easier on the fingers thanks to new navigation and search functionality. In short, finding the information visitors want will take fewer clicks than ever.

With 2015 being a year of changes and volatility in our market, the importance of strong, supportive business relationships was made even clearer. Longtime business associates became friends, and new business relationships formed with former employees who stayed in touch, neighbors, contacts made through my local chamber of commerce and even my brother’s gym-workout partners. These are people who provided helpful insights and became ambassadors of our company, because they got to know us and saw potential. 

KME CNC developed a 5-axis tombstone 8 years ago for horizontal machining centers that allows milling on five or more sides of a workpiece and on four different platters in a single setup. Recently, the company unveiled a version that requires no wires, cables or any type of connection, making it easier to move parts in and out of a machine.

The view from Jungfraujoch inspires awe. So does the railway that transports visitors to the site—a ridge located 11,332’ above sea level in the Swiss Alps. I was exposed to another example of commitment while in Switzerland, during a visit to the Mikron Group. Company vice president Markus Schnyder recounted his attempts in the early 1990s to develop a drill for a customer that used Mikron rotary transfer machines to drill holes in stainless steel watch bracelets.

Are visitors to a bearing manufacturing facility in Hoechstadt, Germany, getting an early glimpse of what Industry 4.0 looks like? That’s the hope of Schaeffler Group, which owns the facility. The plant houses a machine tool meant to show how digitalization works—not in a laboratory, but in an actual manufacturing environment.

PCD oxidizes when cutting materials such as iron, cobalt, nickel, chromium and vanadium because of the high temperatures generated while cutting. Although not as hard, PCBN possesses superior chemical inertness compared to PCD.

I typically keep my resume online at all times on the major job search engines and update it annually to keep recruiters I’ve worked with in the past abreast of what is happening with my career. The drawback is, after I update my resume, I am inundated with email from recruiters and job placement companies that want to place me in a new position. If you’ve ever posted your resume to an online job search engines, I’m sure you’re familiar with this scenario.

Metrology is evolving to allow inspection to be moved closer to the production area. Is it time to remove your inspection lab and retire your old, reliable coordinate measuring machine? Has portable metrology equipment reached a point where all your parts can be measured directly on the shop floor? The answer to both remains a resounding, “Not quite yet.”

Anyone who’s drilled a deep hole on a CNC lathe or mill knows it’s not easy. Go much deeper than 10 or 20 diameters and out-of-tolerance hole straightness, chip packing and premature tool failure become real concerns. Some machine shops turn to gundrilling houses, where specialty machines and tools make easy work of holes hundreds of diameters deep or more. Unfortunately, this means shipping the parts, incurring additional costs and increasing lead time to customers. Surely there’s a better way.

CHALLENGE: Upgrade QC to reduce the amount of time required for dimension measurements. SOLUTION: Utilize an image-dimension-measuring system that enables hundreds of features to be measured in seconds. END USER: Autocam Corp. Inc., (800) 747-6978, www.autocam.com. SOLUTION PROVIDER: Keyence Corp. of America, (888) 539-3623, www.keyence.com.