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Putting Pieces Together
Remember the show "Connections"? James Burke would take a current item, for example a computer, and trace back into history all the various seemingly unrelated events that had to connect to make computers possible today. I recently experienced a similar connection.
Read MoreIn The Fast Lane
In many ways our lives today seem more complicated and faster paced than our parents' were. My mid-life tendency to wax nostalgic notwithstanding, it's a fact of life today that we all pull from numerous and different skills to get through what's become a more complex life-style.
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Mass Producing Quantities Of One
It may sound like a contradiction in terms, but this Windsor, Canada, shop developed a production system for making prototype and limited production quantities of mold and die sets based on assembly line techniques. It's a concept that scales up or down and is applicable in a wide spectrum of shops.
Read MoreWalking The Walk
Last month, I and a couple of other editor-types were guests of Mandelli, an Italian machine tool builder. We spent a week in Italy visiting various plants that use Mandelli machine tools to make tractor axle units, naval ship cannons, tanks, machine tools themselves and, my personal favorite, Ferrari automobiles.
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Dispelling Small Machine Shop Myths
Many job shops start in a garage with a used mill and a manual lathe. The owners of this Utah job shop took a different tack. Along the way to a very successful business, they've debunked a bunch of myths commonly held about job shops.
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Why Not Change What You're Doing?
This Canadian screw machine shop built early success with automatic and mechanical multispindles. Introduction of rotary transfer technology has accelerated growth and helped solve other production problems. Here's why they made the move and how it has impacted their shop.
Read MoreLowering The High Ground
Almost every day now I get at least one e-mail message from somebody out there in ether-land interested in some aspect of our metalworking business. Many messages are responses to stuff I've written (positive comments always welcome).
Read MoreOf Pogs And Shops
A few years ago, I came back from IMTS (I think it was 1994) with a give-away that Haas Automation had in its booth. It was a game called pogs.
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Let There Be Lights
Austin, Texas is home to High End Systems, Inc. They design, manufacture and distribute lighting systems used worldwide in the entertainment industry and for architectural applications.
Read MorePeace Dividend
In the time since the Soviet threat went away, there have been profound changes in some of our most technical manufacturing companies. A significant amount of our defense-related manufacturing capacity has been freed for commercial ventures.
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What Is Single Point OD Grinding?
Two enabling technologies -- superabrasive wheels and high precision servo control -- come together to provide a contour grinding process that resembles an OD turning operation. For many medium volume OD grinding applications, this method may be a means to consolidate several manufacturing steps into a single setup.
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Keep Your Spindles Cutting
Machining centers are marvelously flexible tools for getting production efficiency. Moreover, arranging machining centers into affordable, flexible cells allows shops to push the efficiency envelope even further.
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