General Shop Equipment & Supplies

The Mazak VTC-805E vertical traveling-column machining center brings high versatility and productivity to those shops that need to tackle long and/or heavy parts. The machine combines an increased Y-axis stroke, long bed/table size, high spindle speed and torque and Mazak's new SmoothG CNC for efficient, powerful machining, according to the company.

While rumblings of a jobless economy may be increasing, the biggest problem facing the U.S. jobs market is a lack of applicants—skilled or otherwise, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek report.

It's hard for Babatunde Ogunnaike to contain his excitement at the thought of a new federal grants program aimed at improving the U.S. manufacturing workforce. Last week, President Barack Obama signed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a bill setting policy for all activities at the Department of Defense (DOD). Buried within the 969 pages of legislation (S. 2943) is a manufacturing engineering education program to be run by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Ogunnaike, dean of engineering at the University of Delaware (UD) in Newark, has been an advocate for the program ever since two Washington, D.C.–based think tanks first floated it 4 years ago as a network of manufacturing universities.

A $650,000 grant awarded last year to TCAT Elizabethton has enabled the school to begin a new program, machine tool technology. The first class will begin Jan. 4.

It's been a crusade for many manufacturers for years: the battle against an out-of-date public perception of manufacturing as dirty, repetitive work that's possibly unsafe and probably a dead-end career path. Two recent surveys show that there's still a lot of work to do in dispelling that myth—but a third offers some hope.

While manufacturing technology sales were down in October compared to September (and the high order volume that came along with IMTS), the latest U.S Manufacturing Technology Report from AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology shows October sales were 0.2 percent higher than October 2015.

The latest release of the MachiningCloud App is now available, the company announced. Version 2.4 is said to offer up-to-date cutting tool data for all cloud brands, including new or changed products.

VERICUT simulates all types of CNC machining, including drilling and trimming of composite parts, waterjet machining, riveting, robots, mill-turn and parallel kinematics. VERICUT 8.0 features several enhancements designed to increase the ability of manufacturing engineers to analyze, optimize and document the CNC programming and machining process.

Dr. Jeffrey Badger, the host of Cutting Tool Engineering’s Grinding Doc Video Series, helps a shop that appears to be grinding good pistons, but complaints about cracking from the customer suggest otherwise. In his 68th episode, Badger explains what’s happening and how the shop could miss potential problems despite inspection efforts. About the Grinding Doc […]

A shop asks Dr. Jeffrey Badger, Cutting Tool Engineering magazine’s “Ask the Grinding Doc” columnist, whether it’s better to take several small, fast passes versus one large, slow pass when pinch-peel grinding tungsten-carbide shafts. About the Grinding Doc Video Series: Thanks to his work as an independent grinding consultant and the author of the “Ask […]