Articles

Overall Equipment Effectiveness: The Formula For Finding Your Plant’s Hidden Potential

A metric that captures availability, performance and quality highlights the many places where today's automation makes sense. (Sponsored Content) 

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Release The Potential Of Your Machine Tool

Probing can improve OEE in many different ways throughout the machining cycle. (Sponsored Content)

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Beyond Low Bidding

This online marketplace seeks to communicate information instead of brokering transactions. Because the site doesn't use an auction model, low bidders tend not to get the work.

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The Off-The-Shelf Alternative

This job shop sees standard products, developed internally, accounting for a growing share of the shop’s business. The latest standard product may be the “big gun” in more ways than one.

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CAM Software For Turning With Wiper Inserts

A wiper insert can achieve a smooth finish while turning at a high feed rate, but the insert's complex geometry makes programming accurate tool paths difficult. A CAM company working with a supplier of wiper inserts has addressed this problem.

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Magnetic Holding Pattern

In finding a way to allow magnetic milling chucks to hold parts that typically aren’t secured by the "invisible" workholding method, this shop happened upon a means to repeatedly position parts in any of its machine tools.

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A Quick Look Inside Internal Thread Whirling

Using choreographed movement of workpiece and oscillating tool, internal thread whirling can produce difficult helical threads inside parts such as ballscrew nuts.

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Unplug-And-Play Hydraulic Workholding

An OEM and contract shop have found value in an unconventional, untethered hydraulic workholding method that uses mechanical energy transfer to charge a fixture's sealed hydraulic circuit. Free and easy HMC pallet movement is the result.

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A Manager's Guide to Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)

Under current economic conditions, severe global competition and postponement of new equipment purchases are causing business executives to be sensitive about all aspects of manufacturing operational costs. In this environment, it pays to consider both creative and proven methods that manufacturers can use to bring their product to market at minimum cost. 'Overall Equipment Effectiveness' (OEE) is a method that meets this objective. (Sponsored Content)

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Different Directions In Machining Center Motion

Some machining centers have begun to appear that use resultant motion in less elaborate ways. That is, these machines use the resultant motion of different elements moving in different directions to achieve the motion along X, Y or Z, but they do so within machining center designs that are considerably more like standard machines.

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Improving Quality and Productivity Through Efficient Setup

This article describes a recently developed system that uses optical imaging and machine vision techniques to update the program data by locating known, visible features within captured images.

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The Mold Consultant

This mold maker saves customers time and money by getting involved early in the design of molded parts.

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