Workforce Development

EDM

User Interface Helps Solve EDM Skills Crunch

Many shops would like to do more electrical discharge machining (EDMing) but don't have the skilled EDM operators to run the machines. Mitsubishi EDM (MC Machinery Systems, Inc. , Wood Dale, Illinois) recently introduced several new models, and the ones equipped with a new generation of control unit will appeal to shops in this situation.

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Job Shop Triples Bandsaw Productivity By Substituting Carbide For Bi-Metal Blade

York Machine Shop Ltd. (Campbel1 River, British Columbia) cuts aluminum-bronze tube for a specialized paper industry application.

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Holemaking

Job Shop Cuts Processing Time 60 Percent

  Innovative Manufacturing used to spend ten minutes per part machining cast iron differential housings for golf carts, but now total machining time is down to three minutes, 45 seconds. According to Innovative owner and president Rob Sander, the productivity leap came when the company consolidated turning, milling, drilling and reaming into a single machine tool.

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Not Your Typical Job Shop

This family-owned job shop has developed an integrated fabrication and machine shop in order to satisfy customers' changing needs. In doing so it has become an example that other shops might want to imitate.

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Workholding

Short Bar Loader Helps Job Shop Meet Tolerance Specs And Throughput Goals

Maintaining high accuracy and repeatability in production parts requires precision workholding systems as well as precision machine tools. To help machine a particularly complex, high volume part, the company has installed magazine short bar load systems to complement production lathes.

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Job Shop Looks To Future With Advanced Multi-Pallet HMC

By adding an advanced multi-pallet HMC to their equipment, this company now has the ability to pursue work that it would never have been able to bid on before because of the machine's unmanned manufacturing capabilities and high productivity.

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Solving Coolant Problems Cuts Costs In Half For Alabama Job Shop

This manufacturer is impressed with this semi-synthetic coolant since it found that over the course of a few weeks, no bacteria grew, no odor developed, and no excessive coolant evaporation occurred.

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Do-It-Yourself Training

Training and recruitment of good manufacturing people is like the weather, in that everyone talks about it. But unlike our ability to influence the weather, there are things a shop can do about training and recruitment. This story describes one shop's innovative and successful approach to this vexing problem.

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Flexibility And Responsiveness Pay Off For Connecticut Job Shop

This New England job shop's key to flexible responsiveness is allowing its machinists to have total control on the shop floor. Find out how they can produce 250 to 300 orders per month--with 30% of them being new parts.

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Lightweight Pallets Do Heavy-Duty Job For Illinois Manufacturer

This shop used to take 6-7 hours to set up a job to run 1-2 parts at a time. Now they're running 12 parts at a time at a much lower cycle time per part thanks to a dedicated pallet system.

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