General Shop Equipment & Supplies

A conversation with Lee Iacocca, chief spokesman and a member of the board of directors of The Online Asset Exchange (onlineassetexchange.com), a service for buyers and sellers of machine tools. Iacocca also is involved with a company that produces electric bicycles. The former president of Ford Motor Co. and of Chrysler Corp. was at WESTEC 2000, where he met with CUTTING TOOL ENGINEERING to discuss manufacturing's role in the economy, his perceptions of the machine tool industry and business-to-business e-commerce.

Tool chatter is one of the biggest obstacles to effective machining that job nshops face. The author discusses the sources of chatter and offers nsuggestions for minimizing it.

People in the aerospace industry expect a lot from reamers. The author, an nengineer who works for a manufacturer of aerospace components, discusses nstrategies for job shops interested in developing a precision reaming nprogram.

Switching from a brazed-tip trepanning tool to an indexable-insert tool nreduced downtime for a manufacturer of cast iron cylinder heads by 45 nminutes. And, incredibly, the price-per-piece dropped so much that the ncompany could save $690,000 annually.

As the government publishes ever-stricter regulations for metalworking fluids, more shops try dry machining. The author examines the cost benefits of machining dry and looks at the various types of tool materials designed to enhance dry-machining applications.

Creep-feed grinding is not as popular a process as it was predicted to become in the late 1980s. But a machine shop that specializes in CF grinding has found great success by using the process. The shop's owner and other CF-grinding experts contend that as workpiece tolerances become tighter and manufacturers begin using more exotic workpiece materials, CF grinding will grow in popularity.

A detailed description of a combination drill that machines six different nhole diameters. Used on a dedicated drilling machine that drills cast iron ncylinder heads, it was developed over a number of years. The six-in-one tool nis made of HSS and has carbide inserts.n

The CNCs on many lathes don't have drill-pecking cycles. The author ndescribes several ways to program CNCs to peck, including shortcuts such as nsubprogramming and parametric programming.n

Author describes what he's learned about turning hardened steel. Discussed are the machine tools needed as well as PCBN and ceramic inserts.

Three companies that tap millions of holes annually offer advice for improving the tapping of steel and aluminum. Discussed is coolant application, equipment for tapping and determining speeds. There's also a sidebar on thread milling.

When facemilling with an indexable-insert tool, the axial and radial rake angles of the inserts can have a significant impact on performance. This article reviews the basics of rake angles and their effect on tool life, cutter effectiveness and metal-removal rates.

Advanced tool grinding machines are making it possible for even small shops to regrind complicated tool geometries in-house. This article explores the cost and time factors that must be considered before a shop decides whether it will regrind tools in-house or outsource the work.