Expanding the Envelope

While it seems a little strange to use this space to talk about our next issue, there are a couple of new things coming up that we want to tell you about. First, the August MMS will be a very special issue focused on the concepts and practice of high speed machining. We'll devote an expanded feature article section to what we believe is metalworking's most important emerging technology.

Why do we think this? Ever since John Parsons invented NC back in the 1940s, it has moved steadily forward to become the defining metalworking technology of the last half of the 20th century. But after the technology settled in, its development has been incremental in nature. With each new step forward foreshadowing the next, it was reasonably clear where we were headed with NC, what it would do for us, and what we had to do to get there. For users, reaching new levels was largely a matter of building upon their growing base of knowledge.

High speed machining is different. From "benchless" mold cores and cavities to huge, thin-walled aerospace parts to flexible high-volumeproduction, high speed machining enables us to achieve things with the metalworking process that were not possible before. But successfully managing this process is decidedly not just one more step beyond conventional machining practice. Shops will have to learn some very new precepts about the metalworking process, and unlearn much of what they've come to rely on for so many years.

So we'll cover virtually every technical aspect of how to make high speed machining practical—from chip formation to cutting strategies to tooling to NC programming. And we'll visit shops that are successfully applying high speed machining in the mold making, aerospace and automotive industries.

With this new era in numerical control, MMS will also usher in a new era in communications. For the past six months we've been running ads and surveying MMS readers to see who would like to receive a free IMTS 98 Update CD-ROM. The response has been overwhelming, and so we're sending out 50,000 copies of the CD with our August issues. Besides an extensive and searchable directory of metalworking suppliers, the CD includes multimedia presentations on many of the key technologies associated with high speed machining.

So keep an eye out for a very special package in August. As you seek to expand your process envelope, you can count on your MMS envelope getting broader too.