Open architecture, PC front ends, PC controls, and Windows-based operating systems are trending toward becoming industry standards. 19 micron and sized to within 1.4 microns over the entire 8.5-hour run. One new system produces finished parts that are round to within.
Lathe spindle speeds are increasing, up to 20,000 rpm, as are accuracies. The turning industry is responding to customer need by incorporating a broader and more innovative mix of configurations and options, like multiple/sub-spindles ram turrets quick-change and live tooling arrangements built-in automation gantries and robot manipulators and in-process probing, gauging, and compensations. Also, owing to the personnel crisis in manufacturing, machining centers have become more highly automated, so operator skill levels can be minimal, and interactive troubleshooting is a growing trend. To accommodate higher speeds, OEMs now more frequently use polymer concrete beds, modular designs, integral motors, and linear guideways, as well as linear motors on larger machines. OEMs showed machines with spindles designed to operate at up to 42,000 rpm with high feed rates and high acceleration rates. Now, new advances in tooling materials and machine design technology have called for new advances in machine accuracy at higher speeds. Since the introduction of carbide inserts and the increase in cutting speed they made possible, much of the industry's efforts have gone into speeding up setup time and part changes and reducing inventory and processing time. Accuracy at high speeds is the name of the game in chip-making processes these days. Meanwhile, the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT, founded in 1902 as the National Machine Tool Builders Assoc.), sponsors of IMTS '98, have compiled a detailed report on technology trends in evidence at the show. You can read information on new products of interest to the molding and moldmaking community below and draw your own conclusions.
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Such supplier business news was well paced by the faster, smarter, friendlier, and more accurate hardware and software solutions introduced at IMTS '98, many of them targeted at what OEMs are calling a growing market-you guessed it, injection molding. Cincinnati Milacron took the opportunity on opening day to announce it had sold its machine tool group to Unova. IMTS '98 housed more than 1400 exhibitors, up from 1381 at the last show in 1996, in 10 different product-grouped pavilions. It was also the largest industrial trade show ever held in the Western Hemisphere, occupying more than 1.4 million sq ft of exhibit space at the now completely renovated McCormick Place Complex in Chicago.
The latest International Manufacturing Technology Show, IMTS '98, was the largest IMTS ever held in the 71 years since the show debuted in Cleveland in 1927.