Historically, automation in manufacturing has been a bit of a hammer. And as machine operators and plant managers alike know, not every problem is a nail. Fortunately, automation in manufacturing has advanced considerably over the last several years, bringing more agile, more cost effective, an

Machines are one of the greatest assets of any manufacturing facility. They’re always taken care of because the slightest equipment malfunction could cause a domino effect in production.You can have the industrial equipment safely running with ample repairs. But repair services and component replace

With the introduction of automated systems, building machines has become even more complex. This forced designers to devote more time to implementing newer safety standards. A good example of this is the revision of ISO 13849 in 2006, which meant that all machine builders now had to consider safety-

Proportional Solenoid Valves are often leveraged in manufacturing processes. They are utilized for applications where flow or output pressure requires variations, remote control and precision. Proportional Solenoid Valves are widely used in medical device manufacturing and semiconductor production.

Hunched over his desk and peering through an eyepiece, Cameron Weiss pays little attention to the machine tools in the next room. The Swiss-trained master watchmaker is usually far too busy polishing, burnishing, fit-checking and assembling the hundreds of pins, gears, springs and levers that go int

Photo Credit: Getty Images One potential source of serious injury in grinding comes from an oversight that is easy to make: operating the wheel in an over-speed condition. While a wheel that is run far enough in excess of its rated maximum speed may shatter within minutes of operation, danger may

Photo Credit: Mitsubishi Electric Mitsubishi Electric is announcing the release of its CNC Offset Manager software for remote modification of CNC tool and work offsets. According to Mitsubishi, the software enables operators to manage more machines, speeding up machine setup, tool wear changes

  FANUC America, a leading supplier of CNCs, robotics and robomachines, offers an upgrade solution for legacy CNC machines running on operating systems older than Windows 10. The Panel i Replacement Program is designed to retrofit FANUC CNCs with a powerful industrial PC ava

Siemens supplies automation hardware and software to the BMW Group, including the new generation of the Sinumerik One CNC control. The new automation portfolio will be used at the Steyr production plant in Austria to produce an electric drive housing. According to Siemens, Sinumerik One plays

Photo Credit: Mazak Mazak debuted a new line of Syncrex Swiss-style machines at the company’s Discover 2021 event. The Syncrex models are said to feature seven-, eight- and nine-axis configurations and are optimized for high-production of small parts. These new Swiss-type machines use a co

The degree of consistency among G-code programs will have an impact, be it positive or negative, on the productivity of CNC machines. This is true for the commands of the various tools within a program, of commands for multiple programs for a given type of machine and even among programs

In early 2020, small Minnesota-based shop M5 expanded its micromachining capabilities by purchasing a five-axis Kern Micro Vario machine tool. Soon after, it bought another. These purchases pushed M5’s accuracy and tolerance limits and led to M5 becoming a critical vendor for many essen

  Recently, these columns have focused on factors that contribute to the productivity of G-code programs, such as consistency, compatibility, ease of use and safety. Improving programs in these areas usually results in better machining efficiency. That is, when making pr

Schupan & Sons Inc. is a family-owned metal recycling company that also manufactures products in-house at its 140,000-square-foot Kalamazoo shop, Schupan Aluminum. Over the past 10 years, Schupan has grown from 60 employees to 325. “Our value-added manufacturing business is leading

WFL Millturn Technologies has announced the new WFL iControl system, which enables process signals to be registered, evaluated and recorded in the CNC-kernel of the control with the maximum sampling rate. The company offers two variants. The iControl Basic monitors designat

One-person machine shop owner Dan Donaworth, owner of Dan’s Custom Machining, says he needs to run his machine tools lights-out “just so I can get some sleep.” The shop keeps making money after hours in this way, but a tool break or a mislocated part during this unattended machinin

CGTech has released Vericut software version 9.2. Vericut CNC machine simulation, verification and optimization software simulates all types of CNC machining, additive and hybrid manufacturing processes. The software operates independently, but can also be inte

Photo Credit: CGTech CGTech has released the latest release of Vericut software, version 9.2. Vericut CNC machine simulation, verification and optimization software simulates all types of CNC machining, additive and hybrid manufacturing processes. The software operates independently, but can also

I see way too many CNC programs made up exclusively of the G-code commands needed to machine a workpiece. All CNCs allow users to include clarifying messages (commonly delineated by parenthesis) within the G code. Messages are easy to include in CNC programs, even when entering them through the

Photo Credit: Siemens Siemens will present and demonstrate its Sinumerik family of CNCs and machine tool digitalization solutions – Sinumerik 828D, Sinumerik 840D and the new Sinumerik One, the first-ever digital-native CNC – at EASTEC 2021, booth 2012. Sinumerik