Contact
Air in Your Favor
Blasting coolant through the spindle and out the end of the cutting tool is a great way to clear chips. Haas Automation’s Through-Tool Air Blast option can be an advantageous alternative.
Read More
Tool Monitoring for Multitasking Machines
Continuously checking the condition of cutting tools and responding appropriately to wear or other changes is especially critical on machines designed to complete parts in a single setup or run several operation simultaneously.
Read MoreThe Hands, the Hands
The skills we need to keep our industry young start with the most basic, most personal tools of all, yet a grasp of this fact is elusive.
Read More
Chasing after Volumetric Accuracy
Grob Systems has developed a method of checking and compensating for possible distortions to a machine’s structure caused by the weight of a massive workpiece when it is machined in five axes.
Read More
Smooth Technology Is New Concept for CNC
Smooth Technology is the umbrella term Mazak (Florence, Kentucky) is using to describe its new concept for the programming and control of complex, multi-axis machine tools.
Read More
More Accurate Taper Cutting with Wire EDM
Cutting tall, steeply tapered surfaces with wire EDM often creates an overburn situation if the slope of the wire path changes from the top to the bottom of the cut. A feature called Volumetric Taper Compensation with four-axis overburn control compensates for this effect on FANUC wire EDM models from Methods Machine Tools Inc.
Read MoreThe Next Big Thing?
Watch for bold advances in technology, but be moderate in expectations for sudden and dramatic change. That’s not how our industry progresses.
Read More
Still Thinking about a Summer Vacation?
Editor-in-chief Mark Albert would like to spend one in a machine shop, but a very different kind of machine shop. Read about it here.
Read MoreThe Key to Success
It is clear that automation is becoming increasingly important to success in manufacturing. But what does it take to be successful in automation?
Read More
Useful Advice for CAM Software Users
In a whitepaper, Mastercam calls useful advice for CAM software users “CAM Initiatives.” These initiatives are practical projects and procedural policies designed to help a machining company make more effective use of its CAD/CAM resources. Although primarily targeted to Mastercam users, many of these initiatives contain useful advice that benefits users of any CAM software system.
Read MoreBlending Art and Science
These two ways of gaining knowledge often come together when manufacturing is most successful.
Read More
A Whole Book about the Collaborative Commons
I find the concept of the Collaborative Commons both compelling and a bit disquieting. My recent column offered a few comments on this development as an alternative to the market-based economy that we take for granted. Author Jeremy Rifkin has written a book that explores this concept in great depth. It’s called "The Zero Marginal Cost Society."
Read More
