Articles
April Industrial Production up 13%
Consumer durable goods industrial production in April was up 13.2% compared to April 2009.
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Balanced Machining Is Faster Machining
NC program optimization software initially helped Bell Helicopter’s Drive Systems Center machine titanium faster by balancing cutting forces. The manufacturer now uses it to improve cycle times for aircraft parts made from other metals, too.
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Determining Machining Effectiveness, Not Guessing It
KitchenAid uses Overall Equipment Effectiveness to determine in real numbers the impact individual machine tools have on parts production for its stand mixers. In doing so, it brings actual machining processes closer to ideal ones.
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Removing Unwanted Oil—in Coolant or in the Gulf
This floating oil skimmer uses Abanaki’s Fuzzy2 to more effectively collect oil from the surface of open waters.
Read MoreExperiencing, Crafting, Delivering
All three of these story-development steps are important, but the first one is the most significant (and it’s the one I appreciate the most).
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Telling the Mainstream about Manufacturing
How do we reach the next generation of manufacturing employees? One machine tool company succeeds with local efforts. Meanwhile, “C.H.A.M.P.I.O.N.–Now!” seeks to go national.
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March Machine Tool Sales Up 35%
According to the USMTC, March 2010 machine tool sales were up 35% and 57% compared to March 2009 in units and dollars, respectively.
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Going to Extremes
I wrote this column in early 2008 listing machining “megatrends.” It still holds up, but because it was written before the crash, a couple of the points (on employment and currency) have acquired a prescience I never intended.Recently, I got a note from a shop I visited that included an example of another of the trends in that column: the push away from mid-sized workpieces toward more extreme workpiece sizes.
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Five-Axis Head for Touch-Trigger Inspection on CMMs
Utilizing technology developed for its Revo measurement system, Renishaw says its PH20 probe head offers “head touches” for rapid touch-trigger measurement and fast, infinite, five-axis positioning for optimal feature access.
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