Westec offered a useful mix of emerging technology and practical applications. This slide show reflects this mix in its eclectic coverage of what exhibitors had to offer.
Shops and plants should be concerned about wastewater treatment for many reasons, and the best way to turn genuine concern into effective solutions starts with an awareness of current options for wastewater-treatment equipment.
How users and builders of machine tools can benefit from factory digitalization and integration is the main theme of the Siemens booth at EMO 2017. Highlights include enhancements to the company’s Sinumerik CNC software as well as the introduction of MindSphere, a cloud-based platform for hosting applications that enable manufacturing companies to more fully digitalize their operations.
A recent open house at Milltronics’ Waconia, Minnesota, headquarters shows that this machine tool supplier is concentrating on serving its best customers, which include job shops, start-up machining companies, toolrooms, tool and die houses, and other users who want flexible, capable and affordable machines for milling and turning applications.
The presidents of three Top Shop manufacturing companies explain why benchmarking their businesses is important. It is a valuable tool that "shows how well or how bad you are doing." It pinpoints what to work on in order to emulate other top shops. It helps identify metrics for evaluating operations compared to your peers.
Shops are moving to data-driven manufacturing step by step. One of these steps is to access and manage cutting tool data with cloud-based, vendor-neutral databases and applications such as MachiningCloud. A review of this development shows what implementing Industry 4.0 might look like.
The new Denso IP67 submersible robot doesn’t mind a shower of metalworking coolant, which makes it ideal for tending CNC machines inside their enclosures. This capability was demoed during the company’s 50 years of robotics celebration its newest training center in West Chester, Ohio.
Two features stand out on Seco Tools’ new website: a utility named “Suggest,” which calls up detailed tooling recommendations depending on the application, and a “News and Events” feature that consists of readable discussions of new and basic tooling concepts.
Many of the emerging developments and key trends in metalworking technology were represented at this show, making it a revealing cross-section of current advances.