General Shop Equipment & Supplies

Foba Laser Marking + Engraving, Selmsdorf, Germany, appointed an experienced sales manager in charge of customer service in the states of Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

As leaders of developing and deploying emerging technologies to new users, Mitsui Seiki USA Inc., Franklin Lakes, N.J., and TechSolve Inc., Cincinnati, will host a public unveiling of the Blue Arc machining technology at a technology preview and demonstration in Cincinnati on June 6.

BLM Group USA Corp., Novi, Mich., appointed three regional sales managers to support the company's high-precision laser tube and flat sheet cutting and tube bending business in the United States and Canada.

To build cars, appliances and airplanes, it takes tools made in Idaho. At Micro 100 Tool Corp., a cutting-edge operation helps create cutting tools. "We make carbide cutting tools that are used in all machining and manufacturing operations around the world," said Dale Newberry, president of Micro 100 Tool.

Once again, the International Manufacturing Technology Show is right around the corner. IMTS 2018 takes place Sept. 10-15 at Chicago's McCormick Place, which is literally just down the road from where I live.

Hypertherm is launching Robotmaster V7, a task-based robot programming platform built from scratch on a new architecture. Robotmaster V7 caters to process experts to make robot programming easy and intuitive, even for first-time robot users. This new programming platform builds on the performance of Robotmaster's offline programming CAD/CAM software that was first introduced in 2002.

Some people say there is an art to machining. In some cases, there is actual artwork. Machinists Inc. in Seattle, the largest precision machining shop in the Northwest, has made big sculptures since the early 1990s. The first piece was a 17'×13'×3' steel sculpture that hangs in Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, and many more have followed. However, art accounts for only about 1 percent of the manufacturer's work, said Weld Engineer Steve Pollard, who has been with the company for 30 years.

I received an email from a reader letting me know that he disagreed with my recent article on tapping versus thread milling. In it, I stated, "There's little chance of successfully thread milling metals much above 45 HRC. And if you're going to try to tap them, be prepared to duck the flying shrapnel when the tap explodes!" We all make mistakes. So when Tom Fares, president of TNT Custom Equipment in Stow, Ohio, called me out on that section of the article, saying that he routinely taps holes in 45 HRC steel alloy and thread mills into "the low 60s," I listened to what he had to say.

The Eldorado M75-30T is a twin-spindle gundrilling machine with a redesigned counter-rotation fixture. To maximize the effectiveness of the gundrilling operation, it is ideal for the workpiece to be rotated in the opposite direction of the drill rotation. This improves the straightness of the drilled hole and reduces drill drift.

Index Corp., Noblesville, Ind., as part of a revitalized sales, marketing and service strategy, partnered with five new, highly qualified distributors and realigned sales territories.

Kitagawa North-Tech Inc., Schaumburg, Ill., a standard chucks, advanced chucks, custom-engineered workholding and steady rests manufacturer, announced that Mike Roberts of ITEX Workholding joined the company as regional sales manager for the Southwest region of the U.S.

Blanchard grinding has typically been a manual process for many shops. The simplicity of the dials and handwheels found on Blanchard grinders still work well and get the job done. However, there's an even easier way to run a Blanchard through the addition of a CNC.