Industry News

Lightweight Innovations For Tomorrow, a national manufacturing innovation institute, announces its Heller FP 6000 5-axis machining center has been installed, and is ready for use, at its research and manufacturing facility in the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit. With the installation of this machine, Heller is assisting LIFT and its members to further develop next generation processes in lightweight metal manufacturing.

A metal blisk or heat exchanger component can certainly be aesthetically pleasing, but those and the vast majority of other machined metal parts serve a practical function first and foremost. The metal parts Chris Bathgate machines don't.

Almost every machine shop uses facemills for roughing, semifinishing and finishing, but many of these shops miss out on increased material-removal rates because they run yesterday's tooling on today's machine tools.

Expand existing capacity or turn down orders? Many companies are caught in this dilemma. Every time a company turns down an order, it risks losing that customer and potential orders. If the company has no alternative but to accept new orders, at some point the existing machines will reach their limits. What then?

Whether they're required for downstream manufacturing steps or for error-free functioning, surface characteristics are decisive with regard to part and product quality. Processes such as deburring and precision surface finishing are becoming more and more significant as a result – regardless of whether the parts are produced by means of erosion, forming, primary forming or additive manufacturing.

CNC machining is one of the most common methods used to manufacture parts and products. The use of computer numerical controls allows parts to be manufactured using a highly automated process, which has the upper hand on many conventional manufacturing methods in terms of speed, production rate and accuracy.

It is time to put smarter manufacturing into production. An increase in the data and sensors available to the manufacturing industry has made it much easier to gather data on manufacturing efficiency through the internet of things.

As the aerospace industry in Canada and around the world continues to increase its use of automated composite manufacturing techniques to produce large aircraft components, the industry is eager to find solutions to manufacture reliable, safe, and cost effective composite structures.

It becomes increasingly important as the table travel is increased. Ambient temperature changes are one obvious source of thermal expansion. As the positioning table warms, its constituent parts undergo expansion, at a specific rate for any material.

Connecticut's manufacturing future continues to evolve. The dirty, dark and dangerous shop floors of yesterday have increasingly become bright spaces with smart technology. Advanced manufacturing, robotics and the internet of things are more than buzzwords—they're happening. But with all the advancements on the manufacturing floor comes a corresponding need to improve the approach to developing the workforce necessary to ensure success.

The big technology platforms get all the attention these days. But the biggest tech news of 2019 may turn out to be the rise of manufacturing platforms: companies that rewrite the rules of production and product development and in the process create opportunities for local manufacturing.

Generally, when using abrasive wheels to grind parts, a dressing tool is required to maintain form and finish within specifications. Several options exist when choosing the type of dressing tool for an operation. These include single-point diamond tools, diamonds blade tools, form or plunge roll diamond wheels and "rotary single-point," or "traversing rotary," dressing.