General Shop Equipment & Supplies

Meadville, Pa., and the area surrounding the city are home to approximately 150 precision tooling and machine shops. The article explains why this city of 14,000 is such a hotbed of precision machining and entrepreneurship.

A new drill point geometry developed by a tool and cutter grinder. The through-coolant drill is ground in such a way that a hollowed out chamber on the face of the tip retains coolant in the cutting zone while hydraulic forces that are created push fluid to the cutting edge.

The author gives an overview of the most common hardness testing methods: Rockwell, Brinell, Vickers and Knoop.

Tips for deep-hole tapping in titanium and other aerospace-grade materials. Advice is provided by NIST and the International Titanium Association.

Capability is determined by how well a process produces parts. Three measures of capability are important to a machinist: gage, machine and process. The author provides a detailed description of capability and suggests ways to quantify if a process is or isn't capable.

Cutting forces cause the boring bar to deflect, which can lead to vibration and damaged workpieces. The author gives an overview of available boring bars and offers guidelines for selecting one for a specific application.

Grinding burn is a general term used to describe various types of thermal damage that occur to the workpiece during grinding. The author supplies detailed information about each type of burn and offers advice for preventing it

The author discusses three recent advancements in electrical discharge machining: the use of linear motors on EDMs, wire EDMs with an automatic slug-removal capability and dielectric fluid additives that yield finer part finishes.

The use of shrink-fit toolholders continues to grow, mainly because, compared to conventional holders, they secure tools more tightly and extend the life of cutting tools. Article includes an overview of available systems and comments from users of shrink-fit holders.

Salaries earned by metalworking professionals, including machinists, production engineers, manufacturing engineers and corporate managers. Salaries are broken down by region, size of company and type of shop or manufacturing facility.

Overview of the new machine tool technologies introduced at IMTS 2000. Among them are linear motors for axes travels, ballscrew chillers, a new way to lubricate linear guideways and controlling machining processes via the Internet.

Equipping toolchangers with nylon abrasive-filament brushes can greatly enhance process economics and the flow of parts. Case histories of in-machine deburring operations support these contentions, and the author describes how such systems should work.