Sharpe Products recently installed a BLM Group LT7 4-kW laser cutting system. This equipment cuts round, square, rectangle and open profile pipe or tube up to 6" OD.
The keynote for Haimer USA’s May Open House at its headquarters in Villa Park, Illinois, was delivered by President Brendt Holden, who remarked that his company’s toolholding and related products are designed to provide consistent setup for their customers’ machining jobs.
May U.S. cutting tool consumption totaled $215.13 million, according to the U.S. Cutting Tool Institute (USCTI) and AMT—The Association For Manufacturing Technology.
Makers of workholding devices face a moving target. The machine tools they work with are changing. There’s more high-speed machining. More high-feed machining. More multi-axis machines. New uses of coolant to reduce temperatures during cutting operations.
September 2019 U.S. cutting tool consumption totaled $195.9 million, according to the U.S. Cutting Tool Institute and The Association For Manufacturing Technology.
Machine tool orders fell slightly on a monthly basis in July but posted a solid gain compared with a year earlier.
It’s the machine tool acronym you never bother to put into words: CNC. And much of the time it’s probably OK to view your “computer numerical control” as a black box doing magic. But if you’re struggling with high-speed machining, need better surface finishes or higher accuracy, have training and retention problems, or want a better handle on your production efficiency, the answer just might be the latest iterations of those three little letters.
Shops need both chemical and five-axis laser texturing capabilities to generate patterns that were once considered unattainable.
Those who manufacture precision workholding systems have the same goals and challenges as the machinists who use them. Both groups strive to reduce setup times and optimize cutting cycles. Secure, consistent, and accurate gripping is paramount.
A few years ago, two companies joined forces to greatly enhance productivity in heavy milling and crankshaft machining. Their combined efforts resulted in solutions to improve throughput and reduce costs by a factor of four in some cases.
