Quality control managers play a critical role in manufacturing and metalworking businesses: ensuring work quality on parts and driving up efficiencies in process. We take a look at this QA job—the skills, the salaries and the career paths. Are you a perfectionist? Are machining and

For this first article in a series about building aircraft, we focus on engine parts and components, highlighting the real-world problems tooling makers help their customers resolve every day. We also take an in-depth look at what’s going on in and around aerospace part-making right

In light of the unfortunate 737 Max grounding, Tier 1 aerospace parts suppliers for Boeing have been catching up to production schedules and demands that had been hard to meet. While most of the attention is on Boeing and how it’s affecting the bottom line and economy, Tier 1 supplie

Many of today’s turbine blades, stents and optical mirror finishing parts are being made using EDM processes. Here’s what you need to know about zapping your materials free from their raw form. It’s electric. It’s fascinating. And it’s making a real impact in manufacturing. Zion Ma

With 2019 just about in the books, we take a look back at the past year to highlight the stories that matter to manufacturing shops big and small. It’s the time of year when we all tend to take stock, looking back at key moments as well as ahead to what’s on the horizon. We decided

More metal fabricators are using larger-diameter grinding wheels and flap discs for their grinding, material removal, and blending applications — and with good reason. Using a 5- or 6-inch grinding wheel or flap disc can significantly reduce grinding and blending time since the oper

Experts with Norton | Saint-Gobain Abrasives discuss the challenges of gear grinding and how advances in technology are improving the efficiency of grinding methods. Methods of gear grinding have changed over the years. As manufacturing standards get tighter, the right machines an

There are several critical components of a successful grinding operation: the grinding disc; its shape, bond and abrasive grain size; and the equipment that makes the disc spin at thousands of rpm. All these components play a profound role in production efficiency and a job’s profit

Quality On Time Machining (QOTM) is an aerospace machining company based out of Enumclaw, Washington. They had humble beginnings in 1996 as they had one machine doing mostly aluminum and 3-4 axis work, which soon after turned into seven machines. Then in 2012, they acquired more mach

THE SITUATION A major wheel manufacturer is machining magnesium wheels. The resulting high levels of contamination would result in problems with machining. High contamination led to frequent changes of the coolant and problems with surface finish. BEFORE CASTROL • Hardness levels

The role of CNC programmer is central to most modern machine shops. Read on to discover the job responsibilities, training and education required to enter this field and create a career path to success. With manufacturers facing a skills gap problem that could result in millions of

The COVID-19 crisis has had a significant impact on manufacturing. Here’s what companies in the sector need to think about as they ramp up production under the constraints caused by the virus. With some states lifting shelter-in-place orders and factories beginning to restart their

While 2020 was a year of disruption, marked by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, it also forced manufacturers both large and small to dig deep to find resilience, courage and adaptability. Here’s a look back at the stories that drew your attention the most over the past 12 months. The

OIL-S-XPF forming tap enables stable and chip-free tapping in cylinder piston production Mark Coryea  |  OSG USA Saving a few seconds may not sound like much at first, but when you are making over 1 million parts per year, every second counts. Consider what saving 10 seconds per pa

Stereolithography inventor and 3D Systems founder Charles Hull began selling 3D printers in 1986. A few years later, Scott Crump of Stratasys commercialized his fused deposition modeling technology. Others soon followed, and it wasn’t long before entrepreneurs everywhere were buying

What are the skills needed for CNC machine programmers today and in the future? We explore. To say that the manufacturing environment is changing would be an understatement. Advancements in machine and factory automation, 3D printing, tooling, and machine-based metrology and analyti

The production of thread connections is a common application in the metal working industry. Most metal working industries produce parts that are characterized by external or internal threads, from tiny dental screws to large thread joints for pipelines associated with the oil and gas

For manufacturing, 2021 was a year of two halves. The first was characterized by renewal and growth, while the second was driven by shortages of talent and raw materials. Here’s a look back at the stories that drew your attention the most over the past 12 months. After a momentous 2

As your shop expands into high-precision machining, it might be time to swap out your HSS cutting tools for solid carbide drills, reamers and boring bars. Here’s why. There is a place in the machine shop for high-speed steel jobber length drills and chucking reamers, but it’s probab

ADO-30xD carbide drill with through-coolant holes eliminates frequent tool breakage in engine block production. Hole drilling is a common manufacturing operation. Deep-hole drilling, however, presents a different level of difficulty. In general, a ratio of 5-to-1 or greater in depth