New Ways We Cover the Choices and Challenges of Machining

CNC machining is a special kind of manufacturing. Of the different established methods for part production, machining is the one that offers the most diverse quantity of challenges to overcome and choices that deserve to be made well.

Much of this is and has always been process-related. For any given machined part, the choices involve machine tool type, cutting tool, tool path, workholding, cutting parameters, deburring, gaging, cleaning and more.

Then, across the past couple of decades, the range of challenges and choices has grown so that equally important ones are now enterprise-related. For any given customer or sector served, the choices involve certification and qualification; responsiveness to lead-time demands; security and confidentiality concerns; and more. And at the enterprise level, the questions relate to how to take the next step with automation, how to interconnect systems and data, and how to train and retain talent — not to mention the machining provider’s own marketing and business development efforts.

That means an information provider serving CNC machining facilities (that’s us) ought to appreciate, highlight and address the challenges and victories in all these different areas.

In what you have just read, in the four paragraphs above, I have described what Modern Machine Shop is all about, or aims to be all about. Every organization needs to define and regularly clarify what role it plays. Modern Machine Shop reports for and about modern machine shops — we give attention to the kinds of choices machine shops and machining enterprises are making to stay ahead.

Yet we are a media organization, too. That point needs to be noted. The nature of media is changing as much as manufacturing. The array of different channels, contexts, devices and platforms through which any of us seek and find information has expanded, obviously — and fragmented. So, on the one hand, we have to leverage the opportunities we can to find and serve our audience. And on the other hand, we have to make good choices about where to channel our energy, and where the best of those opportunities can be found.

In that spirit, I want to highlight two recent expansions to the Modern Machine Shop franchise. One is a new regular series of installments written by a new columnists, different in scope and promise than the work of our existing columnists. Another is an expansion of an established regular series into a new medium.

Last month, we debuted a new column and a new columnist. “Miller’s Edge,” written by CNC machining consultant John Miller, is all about responding to process challenges on CNC machining centers. Those challenges might have to do with machine, material, tool, tool path, clamping — and quite possibly some combination of all these. Each month, John Miller will take up and try to offer solutions to a problem a reader is facing in a CNC machining process. We plan to happily focus on very specific and even small process challenges in this column, because in CNC machining, solving the small problems can be a really big deal.

Then, this month, we are in the midst of extending our existing regular column, “The View From My Shop,” by expanding that view into video. To date, “The View From My Shop” has offered machining business owners and leaders a platform to express their points of view on issues they are facing, and on topics they see as important to their businesses and their shops. In the new video series of the same name, we visit successful machine shops to offer the video equivalent of views from inside these shops, developing what we expect will be an expanding variety of video tours of different machining facilities. Here are the “The View From My Shop” video tours we have posted so far.

These steps are all opportunities for you. That is, these steps we are taking in our coverage offer opportunity related to the process choices and challenges you face, and opportunity related to the growth, positioning and marketing of your machining business. Here is how to be part of, or benefit from, the new and expanding ways we are covering and serving machine shops:

• If you have a process challenge on a CNC machining center you would like our new columnist John Miller to address — a type of machining or a variety of part you’re not quite succeeding with, or a way that some particular milling or drilling pass is not working right — then here is the way for you to submit those questions.
• If you would like to be a contributor for “The View From My Shop” opinion column , contact us. Each installment is around 800 words; tell us what you would like to use these words to write about. If we accept your idea, we will reserve a month for you and give you a deadline, and you will become part of our writing team. Contact Senior Managing Editor Jenny Rush to begin the conversation.
• Finally, if you would like to see your shop featured in a video tour as part of our new series, contact us to describe what we will see in your facility. What makes your shop different, and what are some of the distinctive features of your shop the video might show? We are deploying various means of creating these videos, sometimes sending a team to the shop and sometimes loaning a package of resources to let shops themselves film these videos, so we have various options for how we might proceed. Contact our team members involved with “The View From My Shop” video series.