Seeing Machining in Japan

DMG/Mori Seiki’s Greg Hyatt, who heads the company’s Machining Technology Laboratory, offers a booth tour for editors during JIMTOF 2010.

In late October/early November, DMG/Mori Seiki hosted a press junket to Japan to visit Mori’s Iga and Nara manufacturing campuses as well the 25th edition of JIMTOF, the Japan International Machine Tool Fair. This is the first JIMTOF since the business collaboration between Mori Seiki and DMG was established. Their joint JIMTOF booth featured 15 new models among the 34 machines on display. The show also marked the introduction of the company’s X-Class machines to the Japanese market (these machines were introduced to the U.S. market at IMTS). The X-Class is a machine line engineered to offer rigid, stable machining as well as lower energy consumption and an attractive price point. Here’s some detail about that new line.

The company’s booth also displayed a number of interesting machined parts, including winning entries to the company’s Cutting Dream contest. This contest is open to manufacturing companies, schools and research institutions engaged in machining in Japan. Check out this slideshow of those winning entries.

JIMTOF is held at Tokyo’s Big Sight complex located on a man-made island filled with buildings sporting very interesting (i.e. non-traditional, sorta “out there”) architecture. Nearly 115,000 visitors attended the show despite the rainy weather (there was a typhoon in the area at that time). I managed to snap photos of a handful of interesting technologies that caught my eye at the show and you can see them in this slideshow.

Thanks to all at DMG/Mori Seiki for hosting such an interesting, informative and fun trip to the Land of the Rising Sun. Domo arigato!