General Machining & Manufacturing Processes

The manpowered shop floor of the past is being replaced by smart manufacturing facilities where tech-savvy workers, aided by intelligent robots, are creating the products and services of the future. As Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise approaches 2019, it's looking ahead to the trends that will define intelligent manufacturing, as well as help empower clients to better evaluate and manage operations, build innovative products and services and grow manufacturing businesses.

Materials scientists at Duke University and UC San Diego have discovered a new class of carbides expected to be among the hardest materials with the highest melting points in existence. Made from inexpensive metals, the new materials may soon find use in a wide range of industries from machinery and hardware to aerospace.

The Finecut micro abrasive waterjet system brings the benefits of waterjet technology to the high precision fine mechanic segment. The Finecut is a premium precision machine with a positioning accuracy of +/-2.5 microns. It can cut minute parts of high complexity with a miniaturized cutting system capable of jet diameters down to 200 microns. Nevertheless, it can as well be used to cut high precision features into large parts up to 500 by 500 mm size, using the full work envelope.

I recently read an article discussing how the Environmental Protection Agency will now allow asbestos-containing products to be manufactured and sold in the United States on "a case-by-case" basis, apparently reversing parts of the organization's 1963 Clean Air Act and the 1989 Asbestos Ban and Phase-Out Rule. While that's good news for the mesothelioma attorneys you see every night on TV, it's bad news for American workers, a number of whom will soon be tasked with mining and processing the dangerous material once known as "the magic mineral" for its heat, electrical and chemical resistance.

Klϋber Lubrication introduces Klübersynth GE 14-151, a special grease for highly loaded small gears like those found in power tools. This product consists of a finely balanced combination of ester and synthetic hydrocarbon base oils with an aluminum complex soap thickener. Klübersynth GE 14-151 has a wide service temperature range, good wear protection properties and a high scuffing load capacity. It also offers excellent protection against tribocorrosion.

The DMC-40x0 motion controller is Galil's highest performance, stand-alone motion controller. It belongs to Galil's latest generation motion controller family, which accepts encoder inputs up to 22 MHz, provides servo update rates as high as 32 kHz, and processes commands as fast as 40 microseconds-10 times the speed of prior generation controllers.

Since 2006, sales of vinyl records have been increasing steadily. No one is happier than Pheenix Alpha. Working from its original 20th century blueprints for a vinyl record press, the company is starting to manufacture an updated version of the press with 21st century bells and whistles.

"Nation longs for one more day with dying manufacturing sector." That headline, published in 2014 by the satirical website The Onion, anticipated both President Donald Trump's fears and the retorts he gets from his critics. He campaigned on a promise to bring back jobs in manufacturing after decades of decline. To people who see the future of the U.S. economy in services, these promises seemed backward. When he was head of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn reportedly asked Trump which he would prefer: sitting in a nice air-conditioned office or standing on his feet all day. In 2018, it looks as if the president is winning the day.

JW Winco Inc. offers an extended range of Shaft Collars that include a variety of different configurations. The products include semi-split shaft collars GN 7062.1 with extension tapped holes, GN 7062.2 with flange holes, and GN 7062.3 with damping washer, along with two-piece shaft collars GN 7072.1 with extension tapped holes, GN 7072.2 with flange holes, and GN 7072.3 with damping washer.

"The problem of real-time localization was a major subject raised during discussions with our customers, and it became increasingly urgent to be able to localize and track parts in the workshop." Those are the words of Christophe Mas, brand manager of WorkPLAN Solutions, explaining the thinking behind the most important enhancement in the latest release of the software. Reacting to customer comments that the optimization of logistical flows is a major challenge for improving productivity, WorkPLAN 2019 R1 allows users to model their workshop, and to localize parts during the manufacturing process. "This is done in real-time through activity time recordings or operator location declarations."

Continuous learning, continuous improvement, continuous generation of ideas—they're all important things. I would like to think they're especially important to manufacturers but am struggling to come up with a specific reason. Every business, from floral arrangers to drywallers, must continually adapt and evolve or face eventual corporate death. Perhaps the reason continuous learning and improvement are so relevant to manufacturing, which in this context means machining, is that our industry is one of the fastest changing in terms of technology.

Depending on whom you ask, you'll receive wildly different unravelings of the acronym DFAM. To music aficionados, DFAM might mean "drummer from another mother," clever branding from Moog Music Inc. to describe its newest line of percussion synthesizers. I wish I'd thought of that phrase. DFAM could mean the Darlington Farmers Auction Mart but probably only to those who live near there in England and are interested in buying a cow, goat or sheep. At The Walt Disney Co., DFAM refers to the extended family of employees who share the stress of working at the Magic Kingdom—as in, "I'm going to chill this weekend with my DFAM before the big Labor Day rush." Then there's the DFAM that manufacturers care about—or rather the additive manufacturers. That's because DFAM is short for "design for additive manufacturing," an acronym every bit as relevant to machinists as it is to people in 3D printing.