Columns

Die/Mold

For This Machine Shop, Licensing Is the Answer to the Inventor’s Dilemma

Machine shops are natural inventors, but not necessarily suited to supporting and marketing a product. This Minnesota shop with an invention related to micromolding will share it through licensing.

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Centralization Errors Grow as Bores Get Smaller

It is important to consider the effects of gage centralization when measuring smaller bores. Selecting the right tool is often based on the bore’s size and tolerance.

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Basics

Custom Workholding Principles to Live By

Workholding solutions can take on infinite forms and all would be correct to some degree. Follow these tips to help optimize custom workholding solutions.

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When Evaluating Gage Stability, a Picture Says 1,000 Words

Gage capability programs can help analyze the cause of stability problems, but it can be revealing to manually sketch out histogram data to get a pictorial view of what is happening.

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5 Reasons Why You Should Know How to Write Custom Macros

Custom macros enhance what can be done in G-code programs, giving users the ability to code operations that were previously not possible.

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Basics

Tips for Investing Intelligently When Upgrading a Shop on a Budget

Working on a tight budget is not easy, but these tips can help you make the most of your free capital.

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Random Thoughts About Reshoring and Buying American

What will be the effect of the supply chain disruptions of recent years? Here are several observations related to where companies produce and how we think about a manufactured product’s origins.

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Automation

Lessons on the Journey Toward Shop Automation

By necessity, small and mid-sized American job shops are automating production, whether through swift, dramatic upgrades in capital equipment, or slow, methodical changes to processes and procedures on the shop floor.

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Help Operators Understand Sizing Adjustments

Even when CNCs are equipped with automatic post-process gaging systems, there are always a few important adjustments that must be done manually. Don’t take operators understanding these adjustments for granted.

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Measurement

How to Calibrate Gages and Certify Calibration Programs

Tips for establishing and maintaining a regular gage calibration program.

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Why Towns Want Manufacturing Plants

A manufacturing facility can harness and focus the native ability of people growing up in a town, and channel this into livelihoods and homes for the town’s next generation. Is this something we lost sight of and are now seeing again?

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Adjusting CAM Tolerance and Machine Modes to Fix Faceting Issues

Fixing an issue often requires fine tuning of both CAM tolerances and the machine mode for full optimization and process reliability.

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Metal Forming Complex Parts
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