Peter Zelinski

<p>Many shops today have an outmoded feel for how much inspection and measurement capacity and hardware is appropriate for the number of machine tools they have.</p><p>I can’t prove that assertion for any given shop or identify which shops those are, but this sense ties together many observations I’ve heard from shops repeatedly, including these:</p><p>That our intuitive ratio of machining capacity to measurement capacity might bear examination stands to reason. A single machine tool today can d…

<p>Is the way injection molds are made getting ready to change? Today, mold cores and cavities are made on CNC machining centers; they are milled out of tool steel. And they will almost entirely continue to be made that way for some time to come.</p><p>But a very different means of making cores and cavities that has now fully come to market still uses a CNC machining center — albeit a modified one — and still works in tool steel — albeit initially in a non-solid form. The California-based startu…

<p>The auto industry’s ongoing shift to electric vehicles is seen as a positive advance in many areas, but not for the business prospects of machining providers. EVs do not have the mechanical powertrain of an internal combustion vehicle, so manufacturing them does not involve the amount of machining of conventional cars. I raised this subject with Dan Janka, president of machine tool maker Mazak Corporation during a conversation at the company’s Discover 2023 event at Mazak’s North American hea…

<p>The approach of the end of the year offers a chance to clear my idea file by noting some observations that are worth sharing, but do not require an entire column to express.</p><p>Here goes: </p><p>Manufacturing is about making vital objects so well and so efficiently that we forget how vital they are. Manufacturing thus brings about disregard for manufacturing. Unfortunately, war reboots our appreciation.</p><p>——————————</p><p>There is a lag between what <em>is</em> and what is possibl…

<p>A recent post by senior editor Julia Hider explores the use of the artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT to automatically generate G-code programming. That article flirts with the question of whether AI can replace CNC programmers. Spoiler alert: It can’t, even though it can aid them by automating certain aspects of what they do.</p><p>That implied question in the article leaps out at me, because it reminds me of a very similar question that Julia and I, and all the writing staff of this…

<p>The hybrid CNC machine tool is an idea that continues to advance.</p><p>This is worth seeing. The term, “hybrid,” refers to a machine tool that is also something more — usually it connotes combining additive manufacturing (AM) and the machine tool’s normal work of “subtractive” machining within a single machine able to mix both operations in a single cycle. As a working concept, the idea is a decade old. Applications are not so widespread that hybrid machines are found in typical job shops, b…

<p>Innovative 3D Manufacturing of Franklin, Indiana, has a secret to remaining consistently profitable in metal part production and prototyping via additive manufacturing (AM). That secret is: Do not have build failures.</p><p>Or, have as few of them as possible. In laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), the company’s AM specialty, build failure is what its name describes: a 3D printing build that fails to produce a viable part, perhaps because of excessive distortion from thermally induced stresses. B…

New process for multimetal drawbar replaces plating with directed energy deposition, performed with roughing, finishing and grinding on a hybrid machine.

Half-day workshop at International Manufacturing Technology Show helps job shops explore ways 3D printing technologies support and enhance machining.

DED parts made by a machine tool provider illustrate various ways strategic consideration of metal 3D printing or machining helps the other process.