Workholding Solutions to Reduce Costs, Increase Throughput April 24, 2018 At the Nirvana Machine Shop on planet Perfection, every workpiece is clamped to a custom-built fixture mounted on a dedicated machine tool. Each workpiece is dimensionally identical to the one before and the one after. All the fixtures are totally automatic—instantly positioning, clamping, machining, inspecting, and releasing the part with the ultimate precision.
Replaceable Tip Drills Offer Versatile Design Improvements April 24, 2018 Since their introduction about 20 years ago, replaceable-tip drills have become increasingly accurate and cost-effective alternatives to solid carbide units.
Big, Heavy, Awkward Parts Need Workholding, Too April 23, 2018 If you’ve ever seen industrial wind turbine components on the back of a flatbed truck rolling down the highway, you have a good idea of what a large, heavy, difficult-to-handle workpiece is. For example, with a single blade on the GE 1.5 mW turbine being almost as long as a football field, the entire blade assembly weighs about the same as 36 small cars.
Innovations Enable Faster Beam Delivery, On-the-Fly Welding April 6, 2018 For ABB, robotic welding comes down to a never-ending process of ensuring parts are suitable for laser joining and developing the appropriate processes. To that end, ABB is refining a recent innovation to improve beam delivery speeds and has developed software for on-the-fly welding in tandem with Trumpf’s Intelligent Programmable Focusing Optic (IPFO).
Medical Machining Shifts Into High Gear—With a Laser Assist July 5, 2018 Constant refinement of medical machining from tooling design to finished product requires not only the ability to handle a broad range of plastic and metal materials but also to achieve predictable results—particularly in the face of strict regulations.
Micro Cutting Tool Options Expand as Applications Increase May 2, 2018 Solid-carbide micro cutting tools about the diameter of human hair or smaller—some producing parts visible only under a microscope—are making a huge impact on manufacturing highly advanced electronics, automotive and aerospace fuel injection systems, and medical instruments and implants.
Liquid Nitrogen an Alternative to Traditional Coolants May 30, 2018 Cryogenics offer an alternative to traditional liquid coolants when conventional cooling methods can’t or don’t do the job well enough.
The Basics of Live Tooling April 27, 2018 Live Tooling, as the name implies, is specifically driven by the CNC control and the turret of various spindle and powered sub-spindle configurations on CNC lathes to perform various operations while the workpiece remains in orientation to the main spindle.
Haas Automation Reports Record Sales in 2017 February 7, 2018 Haas Automation Inc. (Oxnard, CA) reported that its annual sales in 2017 exceeded 13,500 units for the first time in company history—an increase of nearly 30% over 2016. “It was an incredible year,” said Scott Gasich, vice president of sales & marketing."
Jenoptik Opens New Automotive Technical Center June 15, 2017 Metrology developer Jenoptik AG (Jena, Germany) on Thursday officially opened its new North American technology campus here that will focus on the industrial metrology and laser processing systems used primarily by its automotive OEM and Tier customers.