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Tooling & Workholding
These are the kinds of questions that visitors to IMTS 2012
will seek answers to and solutions they will find, by the thousands,
in the Tooling and Workholding Pavilion.
“The trends that I see are that our customers want to be
more competitive, even with their sister manufacturing plants
overseas,” says Kurt Nordlund, president, Seco Tools Inc.
(Troy, MI). “Today, manufacturers have a much more technical
focus on process and on the importance of the total cost
approach to becoming and remaining globally competitive. All
industries like automotive are being very aggressive in developing
their processes to handle the latest materials.”
Nordlund cites the challenge of the newest difficult-tomachine
materials. “We have made dramatic breakthroughs
in developing coating technology, especially for demanding
applications like titanium and Inconel in the aerospace, power
generation, and energy industries. CVD coatings are able to
optimize machining conditions for these applications and
other difficult-to-machine materials,” says Nordlund.
Building On Tooling Platforms
“We have close to 30,000 products developed around
tooling platforms that enable us to innovate across the board
with base substrates, base coatings, and the basic knowledge
of geometries that enable us to produce milling cutters,
round tools, and face mills with precision in industry-scale
volumes and uniformity. Our new generation of replaceabletip
round tools for milling, drilling, and reaming, for example,
will deliver runout absolutely as good as a solid-carbide tool
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in the intermediate range of diameters and for long-reach
applications where solid carbide isn’t cost competitive,”
Nordlund concludes.
In the cutting tool industry, it’s important to develop
the level of technology that’s required to meet the needs
of today’s sophisticated manufacturers, according to Peter
Matysiak, president, Emuge Corp. (West Boylston, MA). “We
continue to invest extensively in R&D to stay on the leadingedge
with the types of new machines and materials that are
being used in manufacturing today. In a crowded field, one
of the biggest challenges that we face is how to efficiently
convey and transfer the application knowledge and technical
product expertise we possess to our customers. We have
to take advantage of all means of communication available
today including the internet, Web sites, demonstration videos
and, of course, IMTS and make this knowledge and technical
information available to discerning engineers so they
can easily incorporate it into their manufacturing needs,”
Matysiak says. "Our Technology Center is also valuable for
interfacing with our customers and their needs. All this technical
support is especially important because our customers
are manufacturing with fewer people than ever before and
they rely on the latest tooling technology and information to
be readily available," Matysiak says.
“We manufacture and offer taps, form taps, thread mills,
end mills and more, as well as the required toolholders and
can recommend the tooling solution that is best-suited for the
application. Taps are effective for most common materials and
have a longer reach that some workpieces may require. We
also have thread mill products with inserts and toolholders—in
essence we have a complete line of threadmaking tools to
meet virtually any application.
At IMTS 2012, Emuge will introduce a host of products
including new taps, thread mills, end mills and toolholders.
Among the new tools is their new Rekord DZBF series
taps featuring an Emuge-designed chipbreaking technology
to eliminate the formation of long continuous chips that
commonly occur when tapping carbon steel, alloy steel,
and austenitic stainless steel. “It’s a little more complicated
when you uniquely design a chipbreaking function into a
tap, but we’ve done it. Although this product is effective
for many applications, it is primarily aimed at problems
manufacturers in the energy industry have in machining
valves and other parts for the oil, power generation and
wind turbine industry,” says Matysiak.