Ceratizit USA, a manufacturer of standard and custom tooling for the metalworking industry, has enhanced its Midwest presence by hiring an engineer.
Steve Smith has been named Technical Sales Engineer. With 42 years of industry experience, Smith serves the company’s customers in North Dakota and Minnesota.
Smith specializes in short-hole and deep-hole drilling, turning, milling and advanced tool materials, including ceramic, Cubic Boron Nitride (CBN) and Polycrystalline Diamond (PCD).
Along with studies in machining and plastic injection mold making, he attended Anoka Technical College and has completed a variety of factory training programs. Further, Smith’s professional leadership is anchored by Kaizen lean strategies that empower production teams to excel.
"Our industry continues to evolve and putting what I know to work for others is when I am at my best," Smith noted. "Helping improve productivity is an investment in my territories’ companies, people and communities and I am proud to be part of that investment.”
An Army veteran, Smith also volunteered as a Special Olympics coach in several sports.
Related Glossary Terms
- cubic boron nitride ( CBN)
cubic boron nitride ( CBN)
Crystal manufactured from boron nitride under high pressure and temperature. Used to cut hard-to-machine ferrous and nickel-base materials up to 70 HRC. Second hardest material after diamond. See superabrasive tools.
- gang cutting ( milling)
gang cutting ( milling)
Machining with several cutters mounted on a single arbor, generally for simultaneous cutting.
- metalworking
metalworking
Any manufacturing process in which metal is processed or machined such that the workpiece is given a new shape. Broadly defined, the term includes processes such as design and layout, heat-treating, material handling and inspection.
- milling
milling
Machining operation in which metal or other material is removed by applying power to a rotating cutter. In vertical milling, the cutting tool is mounted vertically on the spindle. In horizontal milling, the cutting tool is mounted horizontally, either directly on the spindle or on an arbor. Horizontal milling is further broken down into conventional milling, where the cutter rotates opposite the direction of feed, or “up” into the workpiece; and climb milling, where the cutter rotates in the direction of feed, or “down” into the workpiece. Milling operations include plane or surface milling, endmilling, facemilling, angle milling, form milling and profiling.
- polycrystalline diamond ( PCD)
polycrystalline diamond ( PCD)
Cutting tool material consisting of natural or synthetic diamond crystals bonded together under high pressure at elevated temperatures. PCD is available as a tip brazed to a carbide insert carrier. Used for machining nonferrous alloys and nonmetallic materials at high cutting speeds.
- turning
turning
Workpiece is held in a chuck, mounted on a face plate or secured between centers and rotated while a cutting tool, normally a single-point tool, is fed into it along its periphery or across its end or face. Takes the form of straight turning (cutting along the periphery of the workpiece); taper turning (creating a taper); step turning (turning different-size diameters on the same work); chamfering (beveling an edge or shoulder); facing (cutting on an end); turning threads (usually external but can be internal); roughing (high-volume metal removal); and finishing (final light cuts). Performed on lathes, turning centers, chucking machines, automatic screw machines and similar machines.
