General Shop Equipment & Supplies

Before bringing abrasive waterjetting in-house, shops should know it is a deceptively simple process that demands a great deal of thought, effort and planning to ensure a reasonably quick return on investment and increase in operational productivity.

With respect to the norms of the 19th century, Kate Gleason was way ahead of her time. In honor of Women's History Month, CTE remembers groundbreaker Catherine "Kate" Anselm Gleason (1865-1933). During the restrictive culture of her time, she helped shape the global cutting tools industry as a sales engineer for her family's gear cutting machinery business.

The use of aluminum molds for production molding applications is the "biggest trend I'm seeing in moldmaking," said a longtime manufacturer of cutting tools.

What about the less obvious threats to worker safety? How do you take those elements into account? To address this concern, the shop where CTE's Machinist's Corner columnist works uses a system of unsafe acts or conditions tickets (UACTs).

When chatter rears its ugly head, it's a good idea to look at your cutting tools. Selecting material-specific cutting tools is certainly part of the solution.

CNC machine tool owners with a healthy concern for their employees are advised to enclose their machines in protective structures.

Complying with sensitive information requests may be necessary in some circumstances, but it's possible to provide too much information, which might expose proprietary processes and technology and put a company at a competitive disadvantage.

In his March 2018 Lead Angle column, CTE Editor Alan Richter takes notice of developments in large-part machining and previews an upcoming shop profile about Coldwater Machine Co.'s expertise in producing short runs of fairly massive components.

Many manufacturers in the aerospace industry depend on high-precision, complex specialized cutting tools and want them as quickly as possible. However, not all tool grinding shops can meet that challenge. Almar Tools Inc., Camas, Wash., is one that can. To succeed where others often fail, the shop takes a simple straight-forward three-prong approach that consists of efficient production practices and highly trained machinists paired with the latest in tool grinding machine technology.

I recently spoke with Afzaal Mir, founder and owner of toolmaker FSC Cutting Tools Technology LLC, Greenville, S.C., about his business and life.

There's a Sands Casino where the Bethlehem Steel Corp. once stood. The casino was completed in 2009, just 8 years after the 100-year-old steel company filed bankruptcy. Ironically, the biggest obstacle facing the casino's developer was a shortage of structural steel. Even more ironically, the developer ended up buying it from Nucor Corp., the onetime "minimill" competitor that Bethlehem executives scoffed at decades earlier for the startup's embrace of electric arc furnace technology.

FlexDrill CNC introduces the TRD family of vertical machining centers, which drills, mills, taps and bevels large or long parts in a single setup. Alternately, the long open bed, coupled with the movable safety light curtain, allows multiple setups, so that while the TRD is machining one part, another is being loaded (or offloaded).