Sandvik Opens New Training, Demo Facility

Sandvik Coromant (Fair Lawn, New Jersey) recently hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony and open house to commemorate the opening of its new Chicago Productivity Center in Shaumburg, Illinois.

The facility contains classrooms, meeting areas, a tooling showroom and a dedicated machining floor. The fourth of its kind in North America, the new center joins existing locations in Fair lawn, New Jersey; Mississauga, Ontario; and Monterey, Mexico. The company’s productivity centers are designed to help manufacturers maximize productivity and profitability through understanding and application of the latest technologies in cutting tools, machine tools and machining processes. Visiting customers and distributors can attend live demonstrations, seminars and advanced, theory-based training courses.

Visitors at the two-day open house viewed presentations from Kenneth Sundh, president of Sandvik Coromant worldwide; Robert Simpson, president of AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology; and other industry leaders. Machining demos, which used the company’s cutting tools with equipment from builders such as DMG, Okuma, Mazak, Mori Seiki and Haas, highlighted processes including milling, turning, parting, multitasking, drilling, helical interpolation and more.

“I’ve seen a lot of things that are completely new to me—there are inserts out there that I didn’t even know existed,” says Donald Vaughn, a toolmaker and diemaker at Chrysler’s Belvidere, Illinois plant who attended the facility’s opening. Mr. Vaughn says that for many shops, incorporating new processes can be challenging because knowledge is often passed down from older to younger workers. “To really improve, you have to stay on top of what technology’s doing and not just rely on handed-down information,” he explains. “This facility is a great place to come and get a better understanding of the progress being made in tooling and machining processes.”