For Dale Mickelson, Yasda product manager at Methods Machine Tools Inc. (Sudbury, MA) and author of several books on hard milling, tackling heat-resistant superalloys (HRSAs) requires the perfect combination of machine, workholding, tooling, tool paths and coolant.

About the time that the equivalent of a couple of vertical machining centers are going full bore out in the shop, you’ll know that it’s time to make that commitment to a major investment in horizontal machining center technology to keep up with your order book.

Controlling cost and complexity starts in design. Capturing and applying experience in a disciplined manner is vital, for both design engineers and their manufacturing counterparts.

From a simple locating pin to a complex fluid manifold, every manufactured part starts out as an idea. A Colorado shop brings its customers’ concepts to reality by blending advanced manufacturing technology and careful process and data management with a team-focused company culture and nearly 40 years of experience.

To stay current with technology and peer into the future of manufacturing, take a look at our preview of IMTS—The International Manufacturing Technology Show, to be held at McCormick Place in Chicago from Sept. 10 through Sept. 15. In the following pages, ME provides in-depth examinations of each pavilion at IMTS, as well as previews of the products you will be able to see displayed at exhibitors’ booths.

Additive manufacturing (AM) pioneer Charles Hull introduced the first commercial 3D printer, the SLA-1, in 1987. Jaws dropped, machinists wondered about their next career, pundits said it spelled the death of traditional manufacturing. None of that happened, thankfully; in fact, some said 3D printing was a bunch of hype, good for little more than investment casting patterns and proof of concept prototypes.

Most anyone attending IMTS 2018 is well aware that machine tools are the lifeblood of virtually any manufacturing company. Without lathes and machining centers, parts don’t get made, barstock collects dust on the shelf, and machinists…they’d have nothing to do.

Whether your shop produces plastic injection molds, does tool and die work, or wire-cuts precision features on medical and aerospace components, you’ll want to check out the latest and greatest in EDM technology at IMTS 2018. More than two dozen exhibitors will be there, demonstrating larger, faster machine tools along with innovative ways to make them more productive.

The Fabricating & Lasers pavilion of IMTS shows how makers of machine tools have to keep improving their product lineup. For one thing, customer expectations continue to rise.

Makers of machine tools used to produce gears are looking to the 2018 edition of IMTS to demonstrate how they’re meeting customer demands.

There is every reason to believe that IMTS 2018 will be the largest version of the biennial manufacturing exposition yet, based on the number of exhibitors, expected attendance from early bird registrations, floor space, and the level of advanced technology.

You don’t have to be an engineer to appreciate the solutions for the tooling or workholding challenges that shops will bring to exhibitors when attending IMTS 2018. One thing is certain you’ll never have a better time to find suppliers of advanced tooling and workholding technology under one venue like McCormick Place.

In manufacturing, a shop can have the most-up-to-date cutting machines operating at the fastest speeds. But it still needs to deal with chips and fluids. That’s where the Machine Components, Cleaning, and Environmental pavilion at IMTS comes in.

If there is a primary goal for what companies in this sector want to deliver to their customers it is quality. But throughput comes in a fairly close second.

The world of quality measurement devices and software continues to expand, and IMTS years are especially exciting times. If there is a theme in the many offerings—new devices, new software—it might be how quality devices are continuing to burrow their way into the heart of manufacturing on the shop floor.