Live tooling for CNC turning machines expands a manufacturer’s options by enabling off-center, secondary operations such as drilling, tapping, and end milling on the part face and around the diameter. As you might expect, there are a number of important considerations when adding live tooling to your existing CNC machines or including it in a new machine purchase. Here are 6 such points to think about.
Whether you’re brand new to CNC machine programming or working with a new machine tool control system, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and even a bit intimidated. Gosiger applications engineer and CNC programming instructor Kevin Chandler has taught scores of machine operators over the past 20 years, so we asked him to share a few basic programming thoughts.
Hardinge Inc., a leading international provider of advanced metal-cutting solutions, announces the release of two all-new Bridgeport 5-Face (4+1) Vertical Machining Centers – the GX 250 5F and GXR 320 5F. These new 4+1 axis vertical machining centers are high quality machine tools designed to achieve maximum capacity and performance in the job shop, OEM, aerospace, medical, electronic, defense, automotive and power generation industries, as well as many other manufacturing sectors.
Once again the taxman cometh and many business owners are either gathering their financial records to prepare tax returns or filing them away. And since the promise of a completely paperless office is as much a reality as all of us having flying cars, it’s once again time to ask ourselves how long we need to keep these financial documents.
This 7-minute video presentation features a live demonstration of how to easily calibrate an Okuma 2-axis lathe equipped with the OSP-200L CNC control. It also explains how to set tool length offset values for a master tool used in tool probe calibration, the steps necessary to calibrate a tool probe, and how to touch off other tools in a turret to obtain the correct tool length offset.
Today’s turning machines and horizontal machining centers (HMC) are more accurate and repeatable then ever before and provide increasingly faster spindle speeds. Sophisticated, intelligent controls like the Okuma OSP THINC system easily execute complex programs while managing extensive production schedules. And with designed-in features that compensate for thermal influences, help you avoid turret crashes and make setups and programming easier, CNC machine shops can make accurate parts faster and more cost-effectively.
For more than 90 years Gosiger sales engineers and applications specialists have worked with hundreds of machine tool customers to help them select the best equipment for their manufacturing operations. During this process they share what they believe are the most important characteristics to have in a CNC machine for their specific applications. However, regardless of the customer’s unique requirements, here are the top 7 fundamentals that these CNC shop owners and production managers in companies of all kinds and sizes want in a new machine tool.
The true cost of servicing a CNC machine tool, including downtime, can get very expensive. However there are a number of common sense ways you can reduce the number of service calls you make each year. Here are 7:
This new router style end mill tool from Sandvik Coromant (2P230 series) as shown on an Okuma Genos M560V vertical machining center (VMC) enables the cutting of an aluminum part with one tool. It provides high feed rate cutting used for z-level roughing and, because of its versatility, allows for multiple cutting strategies, reduces the number of tool changes and allows roughing to near net shape.