General Shop Equipment & Supplies

The National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS), the manufacturing industry's standards and certification body, and the Gene Haas Foundation (GHF), which provides scholarships for students entering technical training programs, will partner for the second year to help schools prepare more students for success in precision manufacturing careers.

>Flame straightening is one of those old-timer skills everybody has heard of but few have had the opportunity to witness. The ability to straighten bent plates and shafts is almost magical in its simplicity. It's definitely a valuable skill if you intend to spend any time around a welding shop, unless you relish the thought of beating a stubborn shaft or plate into submission with a mallet

Overcome excessive tool wear and poor surface finishes when machining flats on a steel truck shaft. A milling tool that exerts all cutting forces downward and cuts freely.

Eliminate excess coolant to improve shop floor safety and cleanliness. Minimum quantity lubrication systems.

Machine shops need lots of tangible assets to make parts: machine tools, cutting tools and real estate, among other items.

What is your company doing to replace its retiring workforce?

In a typical machine-tool-axis positioning system, the workpiece is mounted on a table that slides along flat, straight guide ways. The table may be supported on the guide ways by rolling elements or by a thin film of oil or grease. A screw controls the table position along the guide way. The rotation of the screw in the nonrotating nut that is fixed to the table drives the table left or right. The rotation of the motor translates into linear table position through the pitch of the screw.

The creation of superhydrophobic metals using femtosecond lasers.

There comes a time when some chipmaking shops add wire EDMing to their repertoire. This is often done to reduce costs, because bringing what were once subcontracted, secondary EDMing operations in-house often makes good financial and logistical sense.

Software for high-efficiency roughing makes moldmaking faster, more efficient.

Small shop becomes a big aerospace manufacturer -- with a little help from its friends.