Industry News for 05/2019

Mike Gampetro has a great job. As a CNC programmer for the Proposal Engineering Dept. at Ingersoll Cutting Tools, Rockford, Illinois, he spends his days improving customers’ machining processes. It could be an Inconel part where Gampetro suggests ways to increase tool life, or it could be a long-runner where every second of cycle time counts. Either way, it’s his job to generate ideas his customers can then use to produce more parts in less time, and hopefully reduce their operating costs along the way.

Live tooling, as the name implies, is specifically driven by the CNC and the turret of various spindle and powered subspindle configurations on CNC lathes to perform various operations while the workpiece remains in orientation to the main spindle. These devices, whether BMT or VDI, are also called driven tools, as opposed to the static tools used during turning operations, and are usually customized for the particular machine tool builder’s turret assembly.