Metalworking Information Sites

The following sites offer tremendous resources for your business:

The Virtual Machine Shop (jjjtrain.kanabco.com/vms)—The VMS is back after a brief hiatus to redesign its site and content. Designed, created and maintained by a consortium of business and academic entities (primarily Cerritos College in California), this site is a treasure trove of machine tool data that is part library, part training manual and part community. After all is said and done, however, it’s the library link that you’ll want to visit. It is broken down into eight “lessons”: milling machines, lathes, other machines, cutting tools, CNC and CAM, measurement, engineering and an excellent machining glossary. These lessons are ample, with text, graphics, lots of videos and animated graphics. If this site continues to grow anywhere near as well as it launched, then we’re in for a great ride.

Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (www.eevl.ac.uk)—There is nothing “evil” about this site, unless you are paralyzed with fear over an abundance of engineering- and manufacturing-related data presented on one of the best Web sites you’ll ever find. Based in Edinburgh, Scotland, EEVL is “a project to build a Gateway for the higher education and research community to facilitate access to high-quality information resources in Engineering.” It features a database of the world’s best technical journals and Web sites. In addition, articles from more than 500 journals and magazines are indexed and presented in a bibliographic database. This could be the best manufacturing- and engineering-related site for the metalworking world.

Reliabilityweb.com (www.reliabilityweb.com)—This simply designed Web site is dedicated to reliability and maintenance issues within manufacturing environments. Included is information of interest to any machining manager or leader, especially in the areas of demand and scheduled maintenance, fluid management (lubricants, metalworking fluids and so on) and overall shop administration and management. The site presents data within a reading room (a large collection of articles), tutorials (online e-conferences about a variety of topics) and e-mail-based forums (a sort of ListServ, private discussion forum). A comprehensive directory, calendar and buyer’s guide round out this complete, easy-to-navigate site.

SOLV-DB (solvdb.ncms.org)—Brought to you by the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS), this database gives you everything you’ll need to deal with solvents—health and safety data, physical data, regulatory data and environmental impact data. This is a thorough and efficient database.

OTW Infoletter

Want to get the online metalworking scoop via e-mail from metalworking's preferred information source? Subscribe to MMS' OTW (On The Web) Infoletter at www.mmsonline.com/newsletter/.