Mazak is further expanding its multitasking technology with the new VC-500A/5X AM HWD multitasking machine on display in the company’s second Additive Manufacturing booth 432000 in the West Building. The machine incorporates a “hot wire” additive manufacturing technology developed in collaboration with Lincoln Electric, the company that designs, develops and manufactures arc welding products, robotic arc welding systems as well as plasma and oxyfuel cutting equipment. Here’s how the process works: As with conventional welding, an arc torch melts metal wire directly onto a base materi ..read more

“The concept is to emulate jig grinding equipment,” says Robb Hudson, CEO of Mitsui Seiki USA, when describing a new family of Vertex five-axis hybrid vertical machining/grinding centers in booth 338519. Hudson explains that this concept is literally a “new spin” on milling/grinding hybrids, because the machines can apply a part spinning process that produces tangential planetary work spindle alignment, much like the U-axis motion of jig grinding equipment. Combine this with high speed 3+2 or full five-axis milling that is capable of 0.0003-inch (5.5 µm) precision, and the result is a machine ..read more

Liebherr, the manufacturer of gear and automation technology, is showing off a vision system that provides accurate part recognition at 0.5-millimeter accuracy. The vision system is designed to be used with an eight-axis robot arm to enable picking components from transport bins up to a meter deep. It uses a combination of blue laser and camera imaging to achieve this level of accuracy. The accurate vision system can enable robots to identify parts quickly while reducing the risk of collision, enabling the manufacturer to adapt the automation system to a variety of different jobs. Accordi ..read more

With a new North American headquarters, a new satellite office in Connecticut dedicated to aerospace, new hiring as well as new product offerings, Sodick Inc. has recently accelerated the pace of change within the company. While both Sodick Inc. (the U.S. division) and the Sodick Group (its publicly-traded entity) have long prided themselves on offering an EDM machine suited to every customer—including the VL600QH, a new high-column economy wire EDM that specifically targets postproduction for additive manufacturing—Sodick is seeking to expand its offerings in both its milling and additive tec ..read more

Fives Giddings & Lewis has long had a sweet spot for vertical turning centers. Its VTC series of vertical machines established the company’s reputation for a solid machining platform and operational versatility, especially with shops that prefer to mount workpieces on a horizontal rotating table, which simplifies clamping and protects ring-shaped parts that might otherwise be distorted in a vertical chuck. For shops producing jet engine components, vertical turning represents an especially advantageous “sweet spot” among machining processes. This week, Fives is introducing a Giddings & ..read more

Manufacturing professionals come to IMTS primarily as “doers,” that is, as individuals or teams there to accomplish something—find the best and latest technology, learn how to make processes more productive or discover fresh concepts in plant management. Autodesk can show them new developments such as Fusion Production, a cloud-based system that combines scheduling, production tracking and machine monitoring on one platform. This is Autodesk’s offering in the “smart manufacturing” arena that is distinguished by a practical approach to integrating machine tool data correction, analytics an ..read more

Awarded first place in a pre-IMTS product innovation contest, Sandvik Coromant’s newest Silent Tools actually have a lot to say. Named for their vibration-damping capabilities, the toolholder line’s latest additions act as a machinist’s eyes and ears within the workzone by communicating cutting-condition data in real time. Judged by members of AMT – The Association for Manufacturing Technology, the IMTS 2018 Exhibitor Product Innovation Competition awarded extra promotion in print and digital media for winning products. This is said to further the show’s overall goal of connecting sellers and ..read more

Every edition of the IMTS Smartforce Student Summit features new and exciting opportunities for students and educators in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and this 11th edition is no exception. This year, experiences such as Learning Labs, a Manufacturing Classroom of the Future, Student Mentor Labs, a FIRST Robotics display and more are offering attendees deep dives into the latest technology and industry trends, as well as career and technical education opportunities.  The Student Summit runs every day during the show, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the North Building, Hall C ..read more

The word “automation,” as it circles the manufacturing community these days, brings up images of unmanned machines running for hours on end and articulated robot arms tending long production cycles. It makes sense, then, that the Emerging Technology Center (ETC) in the North Building, presented by AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology, is focused on automated manufacturing. AMT’s ETC Digital Transformation features a demonstration of a vertical CNC mill tended by an articulated arm through a Robot Operating System-Industrial (ROS-I) interface. The collaborative robot arm autonomou ..read more

Chatbot is an app enabling humans and machines, in this case you and Porta Solutions’ Multicenter flexible machine, to briefly co-exist in the same dimension. Developed in partnership with Cisco, the Porta Multicenter Chatbot is one of the first applications enabling an interactive dialog between a person and a machine tool. In this context, the person (operator, maintenance, manager, even the CEO) can easily interact with the machine without any skill or training needed besides the experience of speaking to a smartphone app. As a response to a large number of possible questions ..read more