Articles & Columns

Before bringing abrasive waterjetting in-house, shops should know it is a deceptively simple process that demands a great deal of thought, effort and planning to ensure a reasonably quick return on investment and increase in operational productivity.

As demand grows for finer surface finishes and tolerance specifications become tighter—and competition continues to intensify—parts manufacturers are adopting advanced fluid filtration technologies to achieve their machining and grinding goals.

The use of aluminum molds for production molding applications is the “biggest trend I’m seeing in moldmaking,” said a longtime manufacturer of cutting tools.

When programmed to follow optimal CAM toolpaths and matched to a machine tool’s capability, expensive cutting tools engineered for high efficiency may offer total-cost-and-performance results that are significantly better than lower-cost cutting tools.

With respect to the norms of the 19th century, Kate Gleason was way ahead of her time. In honor of Women’s History Month, CTE remembers groundbreaker Catherine “Kate” Anselm Gleason (1865-1933). During the restrictive culture of her time, she helped shape the global cutting tools industry as a sales engineer for her family’s gear cutting machinery business. 

Machine maintenance goes soft(ware).The stakes are much higher today for machine maintenance. Shops must be more proactive, and aim to optimize every operational aspect of their CNC equipment. 

When chatter rears its ugly head, it’s a good idea to look at your cutting tools. Selecting material-specific cutting tools is certainly part of the solution.

CemeCon Inc. held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Jan. 17 to officially open its new 15,000-sq.-ft. headquarters and CVD-diamond coating facility in Big Flats, N.Y. The opening marks the fourth expansion of production capabilities since the U.S. subsidiary was opened in 1998 and the third increase in capacity for CVD-diamond processing since 2014.

Baker Industries Inc. reports that it has installed an Emco Mecof Powermill 5-axis vertical milling center—the first of its kind in the U.S. and one of the largest milling centers in the Midwest.

YG-1 Tool developed its line of D-Power diamond-coated carbide endmills for machining graphite and composite materials.

CNC machine tool owners with a healthy concern for their employees are advised to enclose their machines in protective structures.

Complying with sensitive information requests may be necessary in some circumstances, but it’s possible to provide too much information, which might expose proprietary processes and technology and put a company at a competitive disadvantage.

In his March 2018 Lead Angle column, CTE Editor Alan Richter takes notice of developments in large-part machining and previews an upcoming shop profile about Coldwater Machine Co.'s expertise in producing short runs of fairly massive components.

Last year, Sandvik Coromant Co. introduced its CoroPlus Collision Detector, which is designed to effectively use data to minimize damage to both a machine tool and a workpiece in the event of a crash.

Many nonmanufacturing people would be surprised by the amount of resources expended on parts cleaning, but it is a critical aspect of part quality. Failure to maintain a rigorous cleaning program can cause significant issues in complex assemblies.

END USER: Sonaca Montreal Inc., (450) 434-6114, www.sonacamontreal.com. SOLUTION PROVIDER: Fives Liné Machines Inc., (450) 372-6480, www.fivesgroup.com. CHALLENGE: Machine aerospace parts more efficiently and precisely while increasing part size. SOLUTION: A 5-axis, high-rail vertical gantry mill.

By using thermocouples embedded in a cutting insert’s coating, a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison successfully overcame the challenge of measuring the tool/chip interface temperature.

For decades, robots were synonymous with large-scale factories around the world. As small-to-medium suppliers are forced to become nimbler, automation is evolving to help them.

While placing a telescope outside the distortion of Earth’s atmosphere may seem like the best way to study the cosmos, CTE Editor Alan Richter holds a different view after the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization Corp. reached out to explain how it's working with Boeing Research & Technology on an Earth-bound telescope that will minimize distortion from the atmosphere.

The biggest benefit a digital vision system provides is the machine’s ability to automatically measure parts, whereas the human operator influences a manual analog measurement device, such as an optical comparator.