Medical

Live tooling's capabilities have increased greatly in recent years. From the start, live tooling was added to increase a lathe’s usefulness. What many users of lathes and live tooling don’t realize is just how useful live tooling has become.

If you enjoy the growl of heavy milling cuts, the machine-gun sound of chips striking glass and the heady odor of superheated cutting fluid, a compact machining center might not be the right machine for you. Like I used to, you scoff at phone booth-sized machining centers, with their tiny toolholders and tables not much larger than a 6" machinist vise. If so, you’re not looking at the big picture. 

A new breed of 3D printers has begun producing parts made of engineering-grade plastics and fully dense metals suitable for long-term use in a variety of applications. These include jet engine components, engine mounts, medical implants and a host of other products that were once machined or fabricated by conventional means. And, compared to earlier-generation machines, the new additive-manufacturing equipment offers enhanced part accuracy and has lower processing times and acquisition costs.

More than 150 U.S.-based robotics researchers contributed to the 2016 edition of the report titled “A Roadmap for US Robotics From Internet to Robotics.” Released Oct. 31, the document calls for improving policy frameworks to safely integrate new technologies, such as self-driving cars and commercial drones, into everyday life. The document also advocates for increased research efforts in the field of human-robot interaction and for more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) courses for students. 

The tagging applications for radio frequency identification (RFID) are vast, including pets, property—and even people. Recently, Micro-Mechanics Inc., a Morgan Hill, Calif., machine shop, worked with process control equipment provider Caron Engineering Inc., Wells, Maine, to implement an RFID tagging system on its Okuma LB series CNC lathe.