General Shop Equipment & Supplies

A shop that grinds tungsten-carbide endmills using a resin-bonded diamond wheel turned to Dr. Jeffrey Badger, the author behind our Ask the Grinding Doc column and video series, because one of the shop’s wheel suppliers keeps talking about Q prime values. According to the supplier, the shop should be using a Q prime value of […]

Cutting Tool Engineering magazine, through its Website CTEplus, presents the 36th episode of the Grinding Doc Video Series. Dr. Jeffrey Badger addresses grit size versus chatter. Visit The Grinding Doc website for more advice from Dr. Jeffrey Badger at http://www.thegrindingdoc.com.

Dr. Jeffrey Badger, Cutting Tool Engineering magazine’s “Ask the Grinding Doc” columnist, shares a number of photos taken at extreme magnification to reveal wheel wear and much more in the the 35th episode of our Grinding Doc Video Series. Visit The Grinding Doc website for more advice from Dr. Jeffrey Badger at http://www.thegrindingdoc.com.

A shop that grinds tungsten carbide with resin-bonded diamond wheels asked Dr. Jeffrey Badger for help to settle a disagreement over how hard to stick the wheel. Plus, now that there are machines with auto-stickers, shop staffers are even more confused. Badger offers some suggestions in the 34th episode of The Grinding Doc Video Series. […]

Dr. Jeffrey Badger helps a shop determine an appropriate material-removal rate in this 33rd episode of The Grinding Doc video series. Visit The Grinding Doc website for more advice from Dr. Jeffrey Badger at http://www.thegrindingdoc.com.

The Wonkblog, a regular business feature on The Washington Post website, tackled the need for skilled labor among U.S. manufacturers in its Dec. 15 post. The news item features the plight of the Mursix Corp., an Indiana company that produces seatbelt buckles and bed frames, and has had trouble finding skilled workers to help keep up with the company's growth. It's a story that's been repeated throughout the news media on a fairly regular basis for the past couple of years. What caught my eye with this particular article, however, was a comment from Michael Hicks, a business professor at Ball State University in Muncie, which is where Mursix is located.

Mazak continues to develop hybrid multitasking machine technology with the introduction of its new INTEGREX i-200S AM (additive manufacturing). With a multilaser deposition system, the machine provides both additive and subtractive capabilities.

Before CNC lathes, most high-volume turned parts were made on multispindle, cam-driven screw machines. Setup times were long, and great skill was needed to design the cams and grind the cutting tools. However, by being able to perform a dozen or more operations simultaneously, they could produce hundreds—often thousands—of parts per hour. Whatever happened to those old mechanical monsters? According to Giovanni Principe, they're alive and well.

While attending IMTS in September, it was nice to meet fellow machine shop owners and managers, many of whom expressed optimism and reported a robust year for their businesses. That was good to hear, considering our market is in the midst of a downturn and requires aggressive management to persevere.

The Grinding Doc fields the following questions: 1. The grinding wheel manufacturer I work for wants to set up a basic lab for testing wheels and different Al2O3 grits. What's the best, most-economical way to do this? 2. I'm getting chatter on parts and am trying to determine if it's from grinding forces that are too high or from an out-of-balance wheel. Is there a way to tell?

Electrical discharge machining (EDMing) goes by many names—burning, spark machining, spark eroding, vaporizing—but they all refer to variations on the same process: removing material by running an electric current between an electrode and a negatively charged workpiece material submerged in a dielectric fluid. At least in the case of sinker EDMing, that's pretty much all there is to it.

Often dictated by the production environment, part quantities and part function, the selection of a parts marking method presents a variety of choices—each of which comes with pros and cons.