Kip Hanson

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.

Twenty years ago, tired of the Minnesota winters, I interviewed for a job with a largish aerospace shop in Austin, Texas. The owner was looking for a general manager, and George, the recruiter who set up the interview, warned me that there might be some tough questions. He was right. I did pretty well until almost the end of the interview. "If you get the job, what's the first thing you'll do to increase productivity in my shop?" the owner asked. It was an unfair question. After all, I'd never seen his shop, so how would I know what needed fixing? In hindsight, I should have told him as much. But I assumed that his shop was much like most shops back then: plagued with hourslong setups, wasted motion and downtime.

Vertical turning lathes have a significant drawback: the chips fall onto the workpiece where they are subject to recutting. By inverting the spindle, chip problems are virtually eliminated.

In a recent blog post, Joshua Jablons, president of Metal Cutting Corp., Cedar Grove, N.J., discussed a topic that leaves many machinists scratching their heads: What is the proper way to measure feature concentricity on a round workpiece?

Top managers at three manufacturers weigh in on the merits of flexible manufacturing systems.

The risk of fire from the use of cutting oil in machining operations is one of the reasons that many manufacturers avoid cutting oil.

Rebuilding a CNC machine tool is expensive, but the result is a machine that is as good as, and often better than, the original, according to this feature article by CTE Contributing Editor Kip Hanson.