Big Bore Lathes: Three Reasons Why You Should Move to CNC Not so long ago, I offered a few reasons to supersize your underpowered or undersized big bore lathe. I also suggested some things to look for when doing so. I'm going to make a similar argument, except this time I'm talking to those of you [...]
Quick-Change Tooling: Four Off-the-Shelf Solutions to Cut Downtime on CNC Machine Tools Spending a few hours or even an entire shift setting up a CNC machine tool was once considered no big deal. Not anymore. With job quantities dropping and shops under increased pressure to reduce costs, setup time is critical. Of all the continuous improvement [...]
Feeding’s Faster: Three Reasons to Avoid Slugging In the previous blog post, I offered four good reasons to save yourself some hard-earned cash and skip the bar feeder on your next lathe purchase. These include floor space, material waste, spindle speed limitations, bar preparation, and the not-insignificant cost of the bar feeder (I guess that’s five [...]
Slugging it Out: Four Arguments Against Bar Feeders Let’s pretend you just ordered a KLR-series 2-axis horizontal turning center from Kent CNC. Congratulations, but how are you going to keep it fed? One of the biggest decisions anyone can make upon ordering a new CNC lathe—whether it’s ours or someone else’s—is what kind of bar [...]
Keep Cool: 5 Things You Should Know About High-Pressure Coolant Systems If you’ve purchased a new end mill or slotting cutter lately, chances are good that it’s riddled with coolant holes. There’s an excellent reason for this. Unless you’re machining gray cast iron, high-carbon or hardened steels, or using ceramic cutting tools—cutting dry, in other words—you’ll [...]
Five Tips for Keeping Cutting Fluids in Tip-Top Shape Nobody likes a stinky machine tool. When cutting fluids are poorly maintained, anaerobic bacteria blossoms, feeding on the way lube and other unavoidable contaminants that collect within any machine sump. This is why Kent CNC’s KVR-series vertical machining centers are equipped with automatic coolant tank skimmers and [...]
3 Chip Management Tips for CNC Machine Operators There’s one basic rule of shop floor economics that everyone should know: if the machines aren’t making chips, the business is losing money. But the shape of those chips and their removal from the work area is every bit as important as producing them in the first place. [...]
Is a 2-Axis CNC Lathe Enough? Whether they visited IMTS or not, anyone who turns parts for a living knows there’s an entire new breed of machine tool coming down the pipe, one that’s making shops everywhere take a hard look at their turning operations. They’re known as mill-turn lathes, and sometimes multitasking machines—whatever you call [...]
10 Tips to Better CNC Turning No shop wants to see their part ruined and scrapped at the end of CNC turning. And although having a combination of proper technique and the right tools to keep jobs in spec and on time, there are other variables that should be considered before arriving at the finishing stage. [...]
A Quick Guide to CNC Turning Centers You can trace the history of the lathe’s origin as far back as 1300 B.C. as it was used by ancient civilizations like the Egyptians, Assyrians, and the Greeks. Over the centuries, we have seen the lathe evolve from a two-person, bow-driven machine during ancient times to its wide [...]
