Articles & Columns

Many trends affect the metalworking industry, including customer demands for the best quality, lowest cost and shortest delivery time. Design concepts for modular machine tools can address these expectations through general-function modules that can be combined to meet job requirements while reducing costs and lead times.

Fallbrook Technologies' shop continues to produce prototypes for licensees of the company's continuously variable planetary technology while performing commercial jobs.

Minimize tool runout, extend tool life, reduce scrap and prevent fixture damage. An offline cutting tool presetter.

Machine shops can be dangerous places, but a combination of planning, housekeeping and the proper safety equipment reduces the risk of injuries, audits and lost time.

Offline presetting maximizes machine availability, reduces scrap.

A Look-Ahead item on a deep-hole drill with a continuously thinned web.

Let's say you want to machine your initials on your favorite Hummel figurine or cut the likeness of the school mascot on your daughter's Little League helmet. How are you going to grip them? A conventional way to grip fragile, difficult-to-hold workpieces is to encapsulate them in some sort of potting compound, a time-consuming and wasteful process.

Milling metals hardened to 52 HRC and harder with solid-carbide cutters doesn't require a heavy-duty, high-performance machine tool when a machinist employs trochoidal milling and applies cutting tools with an appropriate substrate, coating and geometries. (With Video.)

What possesses a new job shop to buy a $1 million, twin-spindle machining center when even the smallest purchases are subject to debate? At Jersey Elite Manufacturing (JEM), Rockaway, N.J., the answer is experience and detailed analysis, because sometimes a seemingly extravagant investment is the smartest move.

While the U.S. greenback has markedly appreciated in the last year, the Boston Consulting Group's Global Manufacturing Cost-Competitiveness Index shows that the U.S. remains one of the lowest-cost locations for manufacturing in the developed world. Productivity increases are largely responsible, and a key factor in this success is a relentless push to data-driven manufacturing.

Take a Gemba walk. If you're not familiar with what a Gemba walk is, let me fill you in.

Laser-assisted machining helps manufacturers cut hard materials.

Efficiently deburr machined hydraulic manifolds. A machine that deburrs via thermal energy.

Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Americas (MHPSA) is setting up a new facility in Texas to support the service operation of our business. The new shop is fully operational, but decisions are still being made on items such as tooling and CAM systems.

Tool management systems prevent mistakes and boost the bottom line.

Increase wire EDM capacity and cutting speed. Replace two old, technologically obsolete wire EDMs with two new ones.

An interview with Michael Nahum, Micro Encoder Inc.

Manager's Desk column covers the ups and downs experienced in the shop this year lead to hard decisions, including staff reductions.

Solid-state LED lighting in machine tools allows for increased visibility, reduced downtime and lower power consumption.

A machinist who is cylindrical-grinding threads into hardened steel using multiple-rib, vitrified-bond, aluminum-oxide wheels is experiencing breakdown of the thread root, and turned to the Grinding Doc for help.