General Shop Equipment & Supplies

This column, which is my final installment, is like that special odds and ends drawer in your toolbox, the one with all the weird stuff in it for which you can't seem to find the perfect storage space.

Minimize tool runout, extend tool life, reduce scrap and prevent fixture damage. An offline cutting tool presetter.

Apply modern manufacturing methods to grow a custom motorcycle business. Automate production and improve part quality and machining efficiency with a CNC machine tool and CAM software.

You never know when a simple comment will have a significant impact; sometimes that's not even the source's intention.

Take a Gemba walk. If you're not familiar with what a Gemba walk is, let me fill you in.

Many trends affect the metalworking industry, including customer demands for the best quality, lowest cost and shortest delivery time. Design concepts for modular machine tools can address these expectations through general-function modules that can be combined to meet job requirements while reducing costs and lead times.

A Look-Ahead item on a green laser-line metrology scanner.

A Look-Ahead item on a deep-hole drill with a continuously thinned web.

Time for a literature review.

Many times in making parts for aerospace engines with high temperature alloys like IN-718, Rene-95 and Waspaloy it is necessary to remove large amounts of material. Traditionally companies use, milling, turning or broaching to remove most of the material and then finish-grind to size. The engineers at Norton/Saint-Gobain's Higgins Grinding Technology Center have determined that for these materials grinding can, in many instances, remove the material more quickly and economically than turning or milling.

Whether you are grinding HSS or Tungsten Carbide, the flute grinding process is the most difficult feature to grind in round tool manufacturing. Though there are many reasons why, the main reason is that this operation is where most material is being removed from the tool, introducing the most heat and spindle load. There are several techniques that can be used to allow the grinding wheel to perform this operation more effectively.

Fallbrook Technologies' shop continues to produce prototypes for licensees of the company's continuously variable planetary technology while performing commercial jobs.