General Shop Equipment & Supplies

Fives has joined forces with Simsa to create Fives Grinding Mexico.

The all gear drive transmission on the 17-inch gear head milling machine from Palmgren delivers full power at any speed producing a cutting speed at nearly 100 percent horsepower and torque.

Heimatec Inc., a specialist in live tooling for the North American machine tool industry, announced today that it will become part of a new corporation, Platinum Tooling Technologies, Inc.

umati (universal machine tool interface) moves one step ahead towards becoming a generally accepted standard. VDW, the German Machine Tool Builders' Association and the OPC Foundation establish a so-called joint working group. Interested parties are cordially invited to participate with immediate effect.

In the 03/2018 release of KISSsys, you have the option of "group-based modeling." Using it, individual finished assemblies can now be extracted from existing gear designs and then combined with other groups.

Many headlines today allude to a skills gap in manufacturing, referring to a lack of skilled labor needed to fill rapidly expanding employment opportunities in the manufacturing industry. After all, U.S. manufacturing added 327,000 jobs in the past year, pushing the industry to its best annual job gain in more than 20 years. When manufacturing companies collaborate with schools to show students that manufacturing is not just a viable career path but a rewarding and lucrative one as well, we all benefit.

BLM Group USA announces the availability of its all-electric DH4010VGP wire bending machine featuring twin turrets and twin heads capable of doubling productivity and/or completing highly complex wire bending jobs. The DH4010VGP is especially well-suited for medium-to-long part lengths with multiple bends, symmetric parts and parts that close back onto themselves. The machine cuts wire free from the coil prior to the bending operation, eliminating twisting that can occur when working from coil to deliver perfectly flat bent wire parts.

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.

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.

Precision grinding results in the material removal of metals of all kinds and crystalline materials of all kinds, i.e. glass, quartz, ceramic, ferrite, abrasives, stone and other materials that cannot be machined with conventional cutting tools. These materials are too hard, abrasive, and require dimensions, tolerances and surface finishes otherwise not achieved easily or cost effectively with any other method.

"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."