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Random Thoughts on Manufacturing, Innovation, What We Appreciate, and More

Here are several mini-columns merged into one. Take these thoughts all at once or in small doses.

Peter Zelinski
Editorial Director, Modern Machine Shop

Random Thoughts on Manufacturing, Innovation, What We Appreciate, and More image
Additive Manufacturing

5 Big Themes in Additive Manufacturing at Formnext Forum: Austin

Formnext Forum: Austin, a two-day event at the end of August focused on additive manufacturing for production, includes a conference exploring important ideas in AM related to supply chains, bridge production, enterprise transformation and more.

Measurement

You Are Not Spending Enough on Gaging

Is there an intuitive ratio shaping shops’ perceptions of how much gaging capacity is appropriate for their machining capacity? Much has changed; that ratio might need to be reconsidered.

Die/Mold

For This Machine Shop, Licensing Is the Answer to the Inventor’s Dilemma

Machine shops are natural inventors, but not necessarily suited to supporting and marketing a product. This Minnesota shop with an invention related to micromolding will share it through licensing.

Random Thoughts About Reshoring and Buying American

What will be the effect of the supply chain disruptions of recent years? Here are several observations related to where companies produce and how we think about a manufactured product’s origins.

Why Towns Want Manufacturing Plants

A manufacturing facility can harness and focus the native ability of people growing up in a town, and channel this into livelihoods and homes for the town’s next generation. Is this something we lost sight of and are now seeing again?

Automotive

4 Steps to a Cobot Culture: How Thyssenkrupp Bilstein Has Answered Staffing Shortages With Economical Automation

Safe, economical automation using collaborative robots can transform a manufacturing facility and overcome staffing shortfalls, but it takes additional investment and a systemized approach to automation in order to realize this change.

Steiner

Causes Are Complex: The Case for Choosing the Right Failures to Analyze

The nuance and complexity of failure in bearings is enough to illustrate the difficulty of failure analysis in general, and how much consideration this analysis deserves.

Peter Zelinski
Editorial Director, Modern Machine Shop

Causes Are Complex: The Case for Choosing the Right Failures to Analyze image
Data-Driven Manufacturing

Can Connecting ERP to Machine Tool Monitoring Address the Workforce Challenge?

It can if RFID tags are added. Here is how this startup sees a local Internet of Things aiding CNC machine shops.

The Tension Between Current and Coming Markets Cannot Be Resolved

A healthy business needs to keep that tension alive. That observation is one of several I have come to through my role during the past several years.

Additive Manufacturing

Does Metal Additive Manufacturing Belong in a Machine Shop? The Answer Is Mixed

Machining is a necessary capability for metal part production through 3D printing, but succeeding with metal AM demands a role and procedures much different from those of many machining providers.

Cutting Tool Inventory: A Big Concern for Small Shops

A job shop might have an amount of money tied up in tooling equal to a significant share of its investment in CNC machines. Here is how one shop owner thinks about tool management.

Will the “Great Resignation” Become an Opportunity for Manufacturers? Get Ready for the Returning 3 Million

The Great Resignation will become a Great Reapplication when employees currently able to stay out of the workforce return to it looking for something better. Machining employers that are already evaluating candidates for fit, without demanding specific skills coming in, might be positioned well to draw upon this wave.

Turn/Mill

IMTS 2022 Review: Attention to Automation Extends Beyond the Robot and the Machine

The advance toward increasingly automated machining can be seen in the ways tooling, workholding, gaging and integration all support unattended production. This is the area of innovation I found most compelling at the recent International Manufacturing Technology Show.

machine tools, spare parts, manual lathes, Mills
Vertical Machining Centers

In Moldmaking, Mantle Process Addresses Lead Time and Talent Pool

A new process delivered through what looks like a standard machining center promises to streamline machining of injection mold cores and cavities and even answer the declining availability of toolmakers.

Peter Zelinski
Editorial Director, Modern Machine Shop

In Moldmaking, Mantle Process Addresses Lead Time and Talent Pool image

Building a Better Business: Lessons for Machine Shops From an Unexpected Source

Learning how to be a great manufacturer by listening to the insights of a different industry, homebuilding (which perhaps is not so different after all).

Shop Management Software

5 Reasons Why Machine Shop Ownership Is Changing

Mergers, acquisitions and other ownership changes are an effect of Boomer-age shop owners retiring, but only in part. Also important: The way we think about machining has changed.    

Additive Manufacturing

5 Tips for Getting the Most From the Historic Return of North America’s Biggest Manufacturing Event

Plan. Explore. Think of the future. And oh yeah, the shoes. Here is how to get the most from the major manufacturing event that none of us have experienced in four years, and that many will be experiencing for the first time.

What Are the Limits to Make-to-Order Manufacturing?

Automated storage and retrieval system maker Modula produces a product with 2,000 parts and hundreds of variations that has to be completed within a customer’s site. Here is a picture of what is possible in making a product tailored to the customer.

New Ways We Cover the Choices and Challenges of Machining

Recently added: a new resource for machining-related process challenges, and a new video series appreciating the distinctiveness of different shops.

Shop Management Software

The Secure Channel: ITAR-Compliant Link Connects Machine Shops and Machining Advisors

Confidentiality concerns plus a shortage of experienced staff can leave shops isolated from expertise. How a system developed by two companies might change access to specific, real-time advice on machining challenges.

Hurco

Machine Shops Move Beyond Metal Removal Rate as a Measure of Success

Metal removal rate is less of a defining factor for machining success than it once was. The reasons relate to changes in tools, processes, workpieces and machines.

Peter Zelinski
Editorial Director, Modern Machine Shop

Machine Shops Move Beyond Metal Removal Rate as a Measure of Success image
Aerospace

Can Transparency Bring More Efficient Sourcing?

A resource that aims to be free for machine shops asks detailed capability information so parts can be matched to producers, and OEMs can target RFQs to shops that are ready to run the work.

Vertical Machining Centers

How This Motorcycle Startup Will Succeed With U.S. Production

Land Moto is the founder’s second motorcycle company. The first time, production was in China. This time, several factors help advance the effort to produce a low-cost bike in the United States. One of these is the way electrification opens doors to suppliers.

Additive Manufacturing

Do Modern CNCs Call for a New Programming Paradigm?

Complex workpieces such as AM parts present demanding toolpath challenges. But meeting the challenges reveals how much precision we’ve had all along — we just need the measurements and methods to use it.

10 Characteristics of a Valuable Machine Shop

What is your machining business worth? A recent event focused on machine shop ownership change revealed what machine shop buyers look for in making this evaluation.

Turn/Mill

Look Again — Multiprocess Machine Tools Hint at Machine Shop Changes

The acceptance of complex machine tools has measurably increased. Recent articles offer a multifaceted look at multitasking machines.

MMS Is Back on the Shop Floor, But There Are Differences

Modern Machine Shop editors visit machining facilities to report stories. We are now more mindful than ever that the chance for this visit is a privilege. Meanwhile, what we are there to report has changed.

Koma
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