PM Blog

Registering 60.4 for February, the Gardner Business Index: Precision Machining (PMI) finished another month of laudable growth. Compared with the same month one year ago, the index increased by more than 4 percent. Readings in February and March of 2017 marked the highest readings of their calendar year. Compared with the average 2017 reading, the latest figure is 8.2 percent higher. Gardner Intelligence’s review of the underlying data indicates that production, supplier deliveries, new orders and backlog all lifted the business index higher, while employment and exports pulled the index lower.  For a third month in a row, no components contracted as exports reported a reading of 50, indicating no change from the prior month.

Precision machining is a system of multiple variables that need to work in harmony to produce acceptable results. The higher the precision requirements, the more tightly the system must be in sync.

Clippard Instrument Laboratory started off as a heavy screw machine shop in 1941, and by 1986 it had invested in its first CNC equipment, a Brother drilling and tapping center. The shop’s first CNC machines were purchased to perform secondary operations that previously were done manually on drill presses and other manual machines. Over time, Clippard became more comfortable with CNC technology. By 2012, the company had several CNC machine centers, facilitating a move into smaller and more precise components for the miniature pneumatic products it had been producing since the 1950s. 

To enable further advancements in metrology, Heidenhain Corp. recently donated some equipment to UNC Charlotte’s Center for Precision Metrology (CPM), a world premier university metrology lab.

Registration is now open for this year’s IMTS – The International Manufacturing Technology Show 2018. Manufacturing professionals across the globe will gather at Chicago’s McCormick Place, Sept. 10-15, seeking technologies and innovations that will give their organization a competitive edge.