PM Blog

The effects of the coronavirus pandemic have, in many cases, positively influenced manufacturers across the globe, shedding light on their crucial machining capabilities that are necessary and in high demand, especially those machine shops supplying to the medical industry. Along with machining these critical parts come cleaning them as well.

Management of the parts2clean trade show in Germany recognizes that keeping abreast of the latest cleaning technology and trends is, in some ways, more important now than ever before. Therefore, the largest manufacturing cleaning show in the world must go on! Parts2clean is scheduled for Oct. 27-29, 2020, at the Stuttgart Exhibition Centre.

Business activity contracted sharply faster in April with a near 8-point contraction, sending the Index to an all-time low of 34.7. Over the last two months, the Index has fallen approximately 14 points, its greatest 2-month move ever.

Gardner Intelligence’s review of the underlying index components observed that the Index — calculated as an average of its components — saw several components move far below their historic lows in 2013 and 2015. New orders and production, along with backlog activity, led the Production Machining Index lower. New orders and production are often bellwether components of the remaining Index components.

Tusa Precision Tools SA (Ticino, Switzerland) recently has begun to explore the possibility of manufacturing ceramic cutting tools because of that material’s hardness and reliability. These are critical characteristics for Tusa’s cutting tools that are used to make precision components such as those used in watches. Before a machine shop can confidently use ceramic cutters, though, much testing must be done. While partnering with a local university to begin its research, Tusa and its team discovered that a dynamometer has been an invaluable component for testing the cutting tools.

“Production of highly intricate components for watch movements must meet the highest requirements. The tolerances are sometimes in the micrometer range,” says Gennaro Teta of Omnino Technology, Tusa’s development partner. Mr. Teta’s attention was drawn to the potential of industrial ceramics in his quest for new ways to improve tool life and process reliability for his customers.

For companies that clean customers’ parts in-house, hearing from a customer that parts are “too clean” is a rarity, since most want their parts as clean as possible. However, cleaning parts to the point that there’s no lubrication left behind can be a negative result for a customer whose assembly relies on a small amount of oil.

Cox Manufacturing Co. (San Antonio, Texas) had this experience when it was told by a customer that their parts were too clean after they had been machined at Cox and then cleaned in the company’s iFP (distributed by Gosiger) vacuum vapor degreaser. The degreaser uses Kyzen Corp.’s Metalnox M6386 modified alcohol solvent in tandem with the Kyzen CP86 rust inhibitor to produce high quality cleaned parts.

If the machines on your shop floor could talk, what would they say? Would they tell stories of being cared for and maintained to the utmost degree, or would they disclose being abused or neglected? Would the turning center that broke last week explain precisely why an alarm went off causing the machine to be out of commission since then? Would it know how many parts it produced in a day or how many hours/minutes it ran last month? Would the CNC Swiss lathe sitting in the corner alert an operator of a potential tool failure before it happens?

Imagine having all this information at your fingertips. The data collected would be a gold mine to management; it could be used to make more informed decisions on the shop floor as well as optimize processes. Money and time would be saved and return on investment (ROI) would be easy to calculate.