Selecting the best type of cutting tool for holemaking jobs is not always clear. It is best to have a drill that caters to the workpiece material, produces the specs required, and provides the most profit for the job at hand. Considering the variety of jobs and parts manufactured in machine shops, there is no “one-drill-fits-all.”
With the ongoing shortage of skilled workers and the pickup in the economy, suppliers of welding equipment are finding ways to making welding easier for those working in manufacturing. Automation is the leading technique among many.
Prima Power Laserdyne recently presented a Zeiss high-resolution microscope to the welding program leaders of Anoka Technical College as the college expands its robotic and laser welding program.
March 2021 U.S. cutting tool consumption totaled $177.6 million, up 18.8 percent from February's $149.5 million and down 2.6 percent when compared with the $182.3 million reported for March 2020.
New features mean more choices in cutting with inserts
On paper, it should have been smooth sailing. When Fairbanks Morse installed a robotic welding cell at its Beloit, Wis. headquarters, the goal was to increase output of the massive marine propulsion systems they manufacture.
Some trends in machining remain constant. Machine speeds continue to increase. Difficult-to-cut materials are used more frequently.
SMW Autoblok has introduced the TX Series 3-jaw pull-down chucks featuring repeatability of up to 4 µm (0.00015”) and precise, self-centering accuracy for heavy duty metal cutting applications.
Two things everyone knows about diamonds: they’re very hard and they’re very expensive. And so it is with polycrystalline diamond (PCD) as well as cubic boron nitride (CBN) cutting tools.
An online “It’s Tool Time” event, eight months after Ceratizit’s first Tool Time show, focused on how manufacturers merge the use of Ceratizit cutting tools–from a portfolio of 65,000 products–with new technologies such as additive manufacturing.
