MMS Blog

15 Oct 1998

Process And Profit

This company quickly transformed itself from a small machine shop to a high value-added supplier largely through the purposeful broadening of its manufacturing process knowledge. The trick was matching company resources with customer needs.

15 Oct 1998

Growing Into CNC

Like many manufacturing enterprises, this New York shop started with the most basic machine tools and processes. In just six years, they've gone from virturally zero to almost $40 million in sales. Here's a look at how the company's manufacturing has had to evolve to keep up with triple-digit growth in the sales of its products.

15 Sep 1998

New EDM Wire Changes The High Performance Trade-Off

A new type of surface-modified brass wire recently developed in the United States promises to help users of the wire EDM process.

15 Sep 1998

Consider Milling On Your Turning Center

Most shops are looking to reduce throughput time. One sensible method is to eliminate multiple part handlings and work-in-process time. Advances in machine tool capability and programmability enable more job shops and general-purpose manufacturers to take advantage of turn/mill machines. Here's a look at the state-of-the-art.

15 Sep 1998

Using Spur Gear Hobs For Trapezoidal Roughing Hobs

Many manufacturers prefer to use roughing hobs with a trapezoidal profile to rough straight side splines in part because it is less expensive to manufacture the tools.

15 Sep 1998

The Practically Dedicated Flexible Cell

Machining centers make sense for this high volume process, even though the machines have continuously produced just one part for years.

15 Sep 1998

Are You Turning Fast Enough?

Let's face it. When most shops go looking for process improvements, turning is seldom at the top of the list. Sure, many shops these days are doing fine work in such areas as reducing lathe setup, combining milling and turning operations on a single machine, and automating workpiece handling functions. But for all the talk of high speed machining and other milling and drilling process improvements, precious little of that kind of thinking is being applied to the turning process itself.

15 Sep 1998

Rapid Milling For Prototypes

Rapid milling is different from CNC milling in that it relies on high-speed capability and techniques to the extreme. For prototyping, rapid milling becomes a powerful tool that provides faster feed rates, better finishes with less handwork, higher accuracies, and a very wide choice of materials.

15 Sep 1998

How This Cutter Came To Be

The capabilities of wire EDM helped make an unusual milling cutter more efficient.

15 Sep 1998

No Experience Necessary

This shop assembled standard machine tools and components into a process for flexible production of a series of complex hydraulic cylinder components - all machined from solid, all accurate in some dimensions to +/-0.025 mm - in quantities that can exceed 3,000 per day, using only two operators per shift to shepherd this production from bar stock to shipping container.

15 Sep 1998