Medical

A review of machine tool products as published in the September 2012 issue of Cutting Tool Engineering magazine.

Yesenia Salcedo, senior editor of Cutting Tool Engineering magazine, interviews Steve McLean, president of contract manufacturer WP Manufacturing, Longmont, Colo.

Shop Web site causes problems with insurance, reports Manager's Desk columnist Keith Jennings in the September issue of Cutting Tool Engineering magazine.

Machine tool accessories can offer economical solutions to many tooling and machine setup issues. Used in combination with a machine that delivers the speed and features a shop needs, accessories can help improve productivity and reduce machine failures. This article examines the benefits of several key accessories, including spindle maintenance tools, toolholder maintenance tools, covers, indicator stands, chip fans, tool assembly devices and specialty workholding devices.

Productive machining is all about keeping spindles turning and making chips. Time spent touching off tools, adjusting tool length and offsets in the spindle and doing test cuts is time—and money—wasted. That’s the value proposition presented by manufacturers of tool presetters, and it’s one that, surprisingly, is a bit of a hard sell in some shops.

New tools help parts makers design for manufacturability, which reduces machining costs and improves part quality.

Shop Operations columnist Tom Lipton offers some suggestions for improving the design of manual milling machines in the October 2012 issue of Cutting Tool Engineering magazine.

Wire EDMing requires a range of equipment and complex operations, which can lead to a variety of problems. But the capability and flexibility of the electrical adaptive control technologies that monitor the EDM process—such as flushing, wire tension, automatic wire threading, wire consumption levels, geometry control, surface quality, water resistivity level and water chiller/thermal stability—have greatly improved over the past 10 years. 

The pros and cons of marking parts with laser, micropercussion and scribing technologies.