General Shop Equipment & Supplies

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports: "Years before President Donald Trump began promising to bring back good manufacturing jobs by getting tough with U.S. trade partners, such jobs had already been on the rise, largely thanks to foreign companies now cast as villains in Trump's narrative. A Reuters analysis of federal jobs data shows that out of 656,000 new manufacturing jobs created between 2010 and 2014, two-thirds can be attributed to foreign direct investment."

A profile of Basin Precision Machining LLC in the Jefferson Co. (Wisconsin) Daily Union describes the company's pioneering use of an ATL iTEM400/600 thermal deburring machine--the first to be used in the U.S. In the feature, Basin president and CEO Erik Anderson contrasts traditional deburring via cutting or drilling with the new ATL process: "We actually take the sharp edges off of a part with an explosion." The machine uses a controlled explosion to generate 6,000 degrees in 20 milliseconds, which oxidizes burrs off of a part.

Canada's CBC News reports on Allan Robichaud, who decided to go back to school at age 69—making him twice as old as his instructor—after nearly a decade of retirement. Now 70, he just completed a year-long course in welding and metal fabrication at New Brunswick Community College—the best year of his retirement, he said.

Omaha World-Herald: The grants, worth up to $175,000 each, are provided through a program proposed by Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts and started in 2015 to help meet Nebraska's need for skilled workers. The initiative aims to reach middle school students and get them thinking about careers in manufacturing and technology. The companies will work with their local schools in developing the local programs.

The Interesting Engineering web site has collected what it calls the "10 Most Satisfying CNC Milling Machine Videos on the Internet." Mazak, Datron, Ingersoll and Te-Co are among the companies represented. Cool visuals made possible by cool machines.

Bob Warfield of the CNCCookbook walks through the benefits of turret versus gang tooling for CNC lathes in the fifth episode of The CNC Chef, a video series presented by Cutting Tool Engineering and CNCCookbook. Warfield offers some insight for those trying to decide which is best for a particular job.

Communities with large numbers of residents who have only high school degrees or earn low salaries are at risk of losing many jobs to automation and offshoring, says a new report from Ball State University. "How Vulnerable Are American Communities to Automation, Trade and Urbanization?" also found that the rise of automation and offshoring could extend such job losses beyond the factory floor. n

"I wish I knew then what I know now". Who among us would disagree with that statement? Such is the case for so many things in life, and Lean is no different. As we all progress along our Lean journeys, we will sometimes pause and wonder why we didn't see certain things as we do now. It's important to remember that you can only make decisions based upon the data you have at the moment … so in other words, don't beat yourself up because you only achieved "better" and not "best." It is referred to as "continuous improvement" for that very reason – it's a process, not a magic bullet, and it takes time to do right.

Using a Norton SG grit wheel, a shop turned to the Grinding Doc to find out why they suddenly lose form on the 7th or 8th part. To prevent bad parts, the shop dresses the wheel after every 5th part.

For a wide range of facilities that manufacture, process, blend, convey, repackage, generate or handle items that could be categorized as combustible dusts or particulate solids, new NFPA standards and even the first deadline to conduct a dust-hazard analysis are now on the books, adding to the responsibilities of owners and operators of such facilities.

CoroMill 745 multi-edge cutter with high feed capability is in this demonstration used for face milling in cast iron. The 25 degree entering angle of this cutter version allows for high feed milling strategies to be utilized. The concept has a double-sided multi-edge design, making it a cost-efficient solution that delivers high productivity.