Feature Article

Scrap happens. By scrap, I mean parts that are out of tolerance and, therefore, useless. Unlike other by-products of the manufacturing process, such as chips, shavings and drops, you generate scrap only through mistakes. nnSo the challenge of reducing scrap comes down to preventing mistakes.

Swarf, which is the result of particles being removed when grinding hard or difficult-to-machine materials, tells a story.

Metal laser melting has made possible a number of groundbreaking developments in the medical field. One example is a 3D-printed bone drill that, unlike some traditionally manufactured drills, is designed not to damage tissue during surgery.

Until a couple of years ago, the Food and Drug Administration required a unique identifier on each distinct assembly of a medical device in human- and machine-readable forms. That rule has changed. Now, every individual component in an assembly must be marked as well.

Low-wattage lasers are faster, gentler and more eco-friendly than traditional parts-cleaning methods. So why aren't they more prevalent?

Grinding is a thermally dominated process, meaning a high percentage of process heat initially enters the part before coolant quenches it. Unless the coolant is applied at the correct flow rate and pressure, and the proper input conditions are selected, this process can lead to undesirable rehardening burn, thermal softening and tensile residual stresses.

Spindle bolts are made from difficult-to-machine, high-strength superalloys. They have very tight dimensional tolerances, which makes thread cutting a challenge. As a result of facing several thread-cutting problems during process development, we have learned important lessons at Mitsubishi.

If you've ever watched a bar of red-hot metal emerge from the furnace at a rolling mill, you might wonder how that scaly chunk of material became the smooth, shiny and accurate length of steel you just loaded into a lathe's bar feeder. Machinists know it as cold-finished bar stock.

The primary application for ultraprecision machining is optical-grade surfaces for injection molds, which are used to make contact lenses, LEDs for TVs and head-up displays in military aircraft and luxury cars.

Machining manifolds generates numerous burrs, and removing them is no simple task. Basin Precision Machining attempted a variety of deburring methods, including waterjet, kinetic energy and the thermal energy method (TEM).

Some machine tools are modified so much and so frequently it becomes a common practice. That's certainly the case with rotary transfer machines.

Sawing is one of the most common manufacturing processes in a machine shop. It is versatile, simple and reliable. Nonetheless, many young engineers and machinists are quite familiar with lasers and abrasive waterjets but have no knowledge of sawing.