EMAIL CHRIS

A Chance to Tell Your Story

If you are involved in the precision machined products industry, you have a vested interest in what our legislators are up to. The fact is, in many cases, these representatives are uninformed or misinformed about what we do and what we need from government.

The PMPA (Precision Machined Products Association) has arranged, through its lobbying firm The Franklin Partnership and on behalf of its Government Affairs Committee, a Washington, D.C. fly-in on Tuesday, March 9 and Wednesday, March 10. The idea is to get legislators and government agency people face to face with industry people in order to explain the impacts of issues such as health care, tax policy, currency exchange, cap and trade, card check and others on our businesses and industry.
READ MORE

   EMAIL CHRIS

Re-Shoring for Stronger U.S. Manufacturing

Who ever thought it was a good idea to send our work overseas? Sure, I understand the simple logic: Because of cheap labor and favorable exchange rates, the price of producing a certain amount of parts in some other countries can be so much less expensive than here in the U.S. that the savings more than covers the added expense of shipping. But there’s so much more to it than that. Most of the red flags that are raised regarding off-shore outsourcing are related to part quality and time of delivery, but the bottom line is the total cost of acquisition. Think “big picture.”

According to the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association, the U.S. imports approximately $200 billion worth of parts and tooling per year. Bringing this work back on-shore would increase employment, strengthen U.S. manufacturers, improve the trade deficit and increase the overall tax base.
READ MORE

Multitasking for Productivity, Efficiency, Accuracy and More

Productivity makes most people happy. Whether we complete a home project, or we reach our daily goal at the shop, being productive in life gives us satisfaction. But in order to do this, multitasking often comes into play. When we are walking the dog while checking our e-mails on our iPhone, we are multitasking. In shop talk, however, multitasking offers similar benefits of getting more than one thing done at a time, but takes the concept a step further: Multitask machining (or using a mill-turn machine) means performing various manufacturing operations without manual intervention. It provides the ability to reduce leadtimes, improve machining accuracy, reduce floor space and initial cost, lower operating expenses and operator requirements and improve the work environment.

With many multitasking machines, a single toolholder is used in place of the tool turret, allowing turning, milling, drilling, tapping, facing, grooving and threading operations in the main spindle followed by a hand-off of parts from the main spindle to a subspindle to complete backworking operations.
READ MORE