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There’s a new woman in my life, and my wife is jealous. Really? I admit that I’ve been a little preoccupied lately with automating my house, but to say that I talk to Alexa more than the mother of my children is unfair. No, it’s not obsessive behavior; it’s an experiment in what’s possible.

Zoller Inc. hosted its open house and Innovation Days event June 19-20 at the tool presetting and measuring equipment manufacturer’s new facility in Ann Arbor, Mich.

It started with the email from “Sarah.” “Dear Friend. We are precision CNC machining manufacturer from China. Please try us, so that you will cost-down 40 percent at least!” I hate junk mail. Next to robocallers and those dirtbags who leave ominous voicemails threatening legal action by the IRS, spammers are the worst. The intrusiveness of it, the endless inbox management, never mind the laughable English skills. It’s irritating.

In connection with the Ceratizit Open Days 2019 press event May 13-15, I visited several of the cutting tool manufacturer’s German facilities (in Stuttgart, Balzheim and Kempten), as well as Ceratizit Reutte in Breitenwang, Austria. The Luxembourg-based Ceratizit Group has combined its Ceratizit, Komet, WNT and Klenk brands under the name Team Cutting Tools.

The CNC Cookbook blog recently polled its readers regarding their use of CNC control systems. According to the results, the five most-used CNCs are FANUC, Haas, Mazak, Siemens—and Centroid, which jumped up 9 places from last year's poll. The company is less well known that those other four but has a growing niche among "do-it-yourself" manufacturers.

A recent CNC Cookbook survey included respondent comments about what they found lacking in their current CNC control. They mentioned inadequate work offsets, lack of web monitoring, limited tool data management and other shortcomings. FANUC Corp.'s Paul Webster explains why for some users, it may not be too late to easily add the capabilities they need.

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.

I once worked in the cubicle next to Mike, the shop’s estimating guy. He sat there all day using an electronic pen to trace the outlines of parts on paper drawings. He painstakingly determined the length of each journal, the depth of each hole and the number of cubic inches contained in each milled pocket before feeding that information into the company’s estimating software. That’s all Mike did.

When it comes to hobbing auto gears, dry machining dominates. “There are no new automotive applications that are being done wet,” said Tom Ware, product manager for gear tools at Star SU Co. LLC, Hoffman Estates, Ill. “There are a few tier suppliers that have not updated to new equipment and are still running some wet applications, but all the major manufacturers have gone dry.”

CTE Managing Editor Greg Bartlett spoke with Rachel Ciullo, owner and president of toolmaker Composite Cutter Technology Inc., Volo, Illinois, about her business and life. The company manufactures PCD cutting tools, PCD wear parts and precision-machined parts for customers in automotive, aerospace, electronics, optical and other industries.

My latest trip took me to Las Vegas, where I attended HxGN LIVE 2019. Hosted by Sweden-headquartered Hexagon AB, the ninth biennial conference took place June 11-14 at the Sands Expo & Convention Center adjacent to The Venetian and The Palazzo resorts, and I participated in the Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence division’s media program.

The mood of MFG Day, the annual celebration of U.S. manufacturing that took place Oct. 6, doesn’t cease after the plant tours and information sessions end and the participating students, parents and educators head home.

My October 20 post on adding capabilities to your current CNC brought a response from a reader who who shares a problem. “We have a few Kitamura MyCenter 4XiF VMCs with FANUC 16iMB controls running daily on our shop floor,” he writes, “The control hasn’t given us a single problem since they powered on for the first time. However, we haven’t been able to get the machines onto our network and we have given up trying.”

A free app for the repair of industrial equipment aims to quickly connect service requesters with service providers. Up! by Up! LLC, Columbus, Ohio, is a new app designed to match manufacturers with companies that perform repair and preventive maintenance services for equipment. “We look at ourselves as the crusaders against downtime,” said CEO A. Vinod.

My Jan. 29 blog post, "Simple steps improve shop websites for hiring," received an insightful reply from Gerry Anger, president of Granger Sales Inc.

Every wonder what it would be like to sell machine tools for living? Rantings of a Machine Tool Salesman by Scott Walker provides a flavor of that wonderland career. Semiretired, Walker is chairman of Mitsui Seiki USA Inc., Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, where he started as vice president of sales in 1991. The company specializes in building heavy metal and mother machine tools.

At the facility where I spent the bulk of my machining career, we had two components to the operation: the surface refinery where I worked and the underground portion where the ore was mined before being sent up to the refinery. The mine was 1,570 feet deep, so it wasn’t just a simple jaunt when folks were in a bind. In addition, there were restrictions on who entered the mine, and the hazard training required for both the underground (MSHA) portion and the methane presence in the mine atmosphere. This mine generated about 2½ million cubic feet of methane on a daily basis.

Although Microlution Inc. has been based in multiple locations since the builder of micromachining centers was founded in 2005, the company held its first grand opening event June 28 as part of GF Solutions Days USA 2019. The first location for Chicago-based Microlution, which has operated as a subsidiary of GF Machining Solutions since 2016, was in Andy Phillip’s apartment in Champaign, Phillip said. He is one of the company’s founders and now head of laser micromachining.