Medical & Healthcare

Hardinge Inc. announces the release of two Bridgeport 5-Face (4+1) Vertical Machining Centers: the GX 250 5F and GXR 320 5F.

Phoenix Medical Products is a Mountain City, Tenn., contract manufacturer of various devices used in the thoracic, laparoscopic, arthroscopic, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, soft and hard tissue biopsy areas of the medical and research markets. As such, their watchword is precision at every turn.

A unique manual milling method is available for generating geometrically true spherical surfaces. This technique can be used to machine convex and concave spherical surfaces. Other than the milling machine, the only tools needed are a boring head and a rotary table.

My recent past has, unfortunately, included the passing away of several acquaintances, one only 38 years old. I also read an obituary in the local paper about a machinist we formerly employed, a man only in his 50s.r In addition, an employee's wife was diagnosed with cancer, completely changing his priorities. Around this same time, my youngest brother had a medical scare, and my mother fell in her backyard and broke a shoulder, requiring a 4-week recovery and making it almost impossible for her to take care of her 90-year-old mother.r These events have brought a sobering degree of reality into my life. That is, the realization that time marches on for everyone and, eventually, something unexpected will impact our lives and our businesses.

The process of displacing metal instead of cutting it is called many things. But whether they call it form tapping, cold form tapping, thread forming, cold roll forming, roll forming, thread rolling, roll tapping or cold roll tapping, many metalworking professionals are unfamiliar with it, according to Peter Gennuso, applications engineering supervisor for OSG Tap & Die Inc., Glendale Heights, Ill.

The U.S. economy appears to be on the mend. In January, the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation gave a tentative thumbs up to sustained business expansion through the first half of 2013. And the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index rose again in January, painting an optimistic picture. Maybe it's time to buy that machining center you've been thinking about.r Before you whip out your checkbook, though, some homework is in order. There's a lot more to machining centers than spindle speeds and rapid traverse rates. Sure, you've had good results over the years buying machines based on that, but that might be the wrong criteria in this brave new manufacturing world. You're facing growing competition from overseas and down the street, so you owe it to yourself to take a look at what's changed in the years since you bought your tried and true 20"×40" vertical machining center.

A medical device manufacturer who has been using Creform Corp. built structures in its production facilities was faced with the problem of providing workstations for use in both its shipping and production departments to associates of various heights.

MecWash Systems introduces the Midi, a fully automatic, highly customizable, self-contained aqueous cleaning system that reportedly meets the highest aerospace cleanliness and inspection standards.

Coherent Inc. has expanded its family of industrial ultrafast lasers with the new Talisker 1000 series.

Bilz Tool Inc. says its TER shrink collet from has proven to be a successful solution in the manufacturing of medical product technology. One specific application of the TER collet, is for machining vertebral supports from the titanium alloy Ti6AI4V.

Walter USA LLC has unveiled the new Walter Titex reamers.

Tim St. Martin knew there had to be a better way of fixturing parts on his company's 5-axis machine tools. "We'd visited some of our suppliers and saw how they were holding parts on their 5-axis machines," said the senior manager of manufacturing engineering for Carlsbad, Calif.-based orthopedic implant manufacturer Alphatec Spine Inc. "They were mounting the blanks into a 'picture frame' and then screwing that frame to a tombstone-mounted fixture. This basically limited access to one side of the workpiece per operation. Many in our company thought we should hold them the same way."