Alan Richter, a 40-plus-year veteran journalist, has spent the last 25 years covering the metalworking industry for Cutting Tool Engineering and currently serves as its editor-at-large. Contact him at [email protected].
As wind power makes significant inroads into the energy-generation infrastructure, machining wind turbine parts provides opportunities for diversification and growth.
Commercialization of cubic boron nitride coatings has proven elusive, but a two-step process for coating cutting tools with CBN is expected to come to market soon.
Reliably drilling high-quality holes in ductile cast iron requires understanding the material's structure, avoiding problems such as core shifting, keeping machining temperatures down and other considerations.
It's not just for prototyping; additive, or rapid, manufacturing can be a cost-effective way of producing parts, especially when used for mass customization of parts and for low-volume runs of smaller, complex, net- and near net-shape parts.
There are five tool tips for moldmakers for speeding up production and aiding in highly repeatable, precision machining. Included are deep-hole drills to avoid pecking, high-feed cutters, tools for reducing EDMing, high-precision cutters and PCBN cutting tools.
With through-tool minimum-quantity lubrication, machine shops may be able to decrease coolant costs and increase productivity and part quality. But, they have to invest in equipment and tooling to achieve those results.