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BMW Bullish On the U.S.
I recently got news that BMW is cutting its German workforce by 7.5 percent over 2 years while planning to increase production in its South Carolina plant 50 percent by 2012. So is that good for us? I kind of think so.

By the numbers, BMW announced a $750 million investment in its Greer, South Carolina, plant and with it, creation of 500 jobs and an additional 1.2 million square feet of space. During the next 4 years, unit production at the plant will grow from 155,000 to 240,000 rounded out by the manufacture of hybrid and diesel models. Employment at Greer is 4,500 full timers.

It makes sense—since this move is driven by READ MORE

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The Growing Power of 3D?

Some recent events have opened what I consider for me a new dimension in manufacturing. At Delcam's recent Technical Summit at Methods Machine Tools in Sudbury, Massachusetts, I got an in-depth look at the company’s extensive range of CAD/CAM solutions. While I've long enjoyed seeing new developments in such products, the realism of 3D modeling and simulation that these systems can generate is what particularly amazes me. Moreover, the applications for this functionality are expanding.

A closer look at Delcam’s CAD-based inspection software, used in conjunction with inspection hardware such as manual and CNC CMMs, portable arms, optical measuring devices and CNC machine tools to verify the quality and accuracies of products as they are machined, got me thinking about READ MORE

Rotary Broaching Defined

For people like me without a background in metalworking, it is often hard to find the meaning of industry terms that most of you don’t think twice about. For instance, the term “rotary broaching” is one that I often see, but didn’t know the meaning of. If I wasn’t dealing with the metalworking industry, I would have to guess that a rotary broach is a decorative piece of jewelry that spins. Knowing this obviously isn’t the case, I finally took the time to investigate the meaning.

Rotary broaching, also known as wobble broaching, is READ MORE