Well into the 21st century, the medical industry faces a host of intriguing challenges, from aging populations to a growing range of personalized and at-home diagnostic and care devices—all set against a backdrop of increasing digital collection, transfer and storage of sensitive patient data.
Maybe your company specializes in aerospace or medical components, and you need to produce complex geometries in metals too tough to cut via conventional machining methods.
There’s nothing mysterious about the need for calibration. As Michael Wilm, business manager for calibration products, Renishaw Inc., West Dundee, Illinois, put it: “When you get gas for your car, you count on the pump being calibrated. That’s why we calibrate machine tools. If you don’t calibrate a machine tool you have no idea it’s going to give you reliable service for manufacturing your product.”
I’m always amazed by the wide range of technologies that go into the process of machining. At EASTEC 2019, I saw the latest and greatest technology from machine tool builders, cutting tool manufacturers, measurement providers, software developers, and many more.
Additive manufacturing, and AM machines, have gone mainstream over the past five years. The technology has advanced. More materials, including metals and composites, are being used for 3D printing, where parts are made from a digital design.
SkillsUSA wields a large shovel, but we have a big hole to fill. That hole is in the American economy and it is called the skills gap—the widening gap between the jobs available and the skilled workers ready to fill them.
A single phone call changed my life forever. In 2003, I was sitting in my office at a fuel cell manufacturing company where I was vice president of operations. A voice on the other end of the line said, “Hello, my name is Mark Tomlinson. I’m calling as a representative of the SME Manufacturing Enterprise Council.”
Nobody knows just yet how the auto industry will adopt 3D printing. But Desktop Metal Inc. (Burlington, MA) is in a better position than most to make an educated guess.
For certain machining applications, off-the-shelf cutters come up short. Here’s how to increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve part quality with a custom cutting tool solution.
According to McNamara, director of sales for Doosan Machine Tools America (Pine Brook, NJ), the most important tools in getting customers to move into five-axis machining are features within the control that make it simple to create, understand and prove out machining programs.