McCormick Place | Chicago, Illinois

“This is such an impressive event, it was great to have our students and staff see so many great examples of what advanced manufacturing is.”*

This free week-long event is a unique opportunity for students, educators, and administrators to immerse themselves in the newest technology to stimulate technical interest in young people, to eliminate age-old stereotypes of careers in manufacturing, and to unite education and industry for the purpose of closing the ever-widening technical skills gap in the United States.

“My students felt honored, recognized, and welcomed to the world of machining. Thank you!”*

Students, educators, and administrators are invited to visit the NIMS 21st Century Skills Center on any of the five days of IMTS. Registration is free and remains valid for the entire week of IMTS, so attendees are welcome to return to Chicago to see the hundreds of exhibitors on display.

“One of the best learning experiences of the year for my students”*

More details to follow!

Leading CADCAM software developer Delcam wrapped up its Advanced Manufacturing Update Technical Seminars last month with two sessions in California, one at SeekTech in San Diego and a second at Selway Tool in Buena Park.

Commenting on the event, Delcam’s VP of Sales for Western United States Christian Briscoe said, “We have added a number of senior account managers over the past year to meet the growing demand for our manufacturing software. We have also expanded our support staff to more than 20 application engineers and strengthened our administrative team. These changes have given us a stronger and more experienced team to serve the western US manufacturing sector.”

Briscoe continued “At Delcam, we understand the importance of your investment and believe that you are not just buying CADCAM software but investing in us. Holding our update technical seminars give us the opportunity to show companies the benefits of their investment in Delcam, the world largest specialist CAM provider with the largest development team in the industry.”

Delegates to the meetings saw the new release of Delcam’s PowerSHAPE CAD software for product design, tooling design and reverse engineering. The 2012 version incorporates the first direct modeling capabilities, alongside many improvements to the existing combination of solid, surface and triangle modeling capabilities.

Demonstrated in PowerMILL 2012 was flowline machining and how with flowline machining, the toolpath is divided between a pair of drive curves in a constant number of passes, rather than having a varying number of passes with a constant stepover. This produces a better surface finish on the part and minimizes wear on the cutter and the machine tool. Other enhancements include control of the angular point distribution during five-axis machining, new thread milling options and improved workplane editing. It has also been made easier to obtain measurements, including distances, angles and directions, from the part model and enter these values into PowerMILL forms automatically.

Shown in FeatureCAM 2012 was how the software has been made even easier to use. A range of keyboard shortcuts have been added and toolpath editing has been made much easier. Other improvements include further developments in the use of stock models to cover 2D features, including bosses, sides and slots, extra options within the tooling database, the ability to automatically counterbore holes before drilling, fully-automated de-burring and chamfering, the possibility to create a negative leave allowance (such as a fitting allowance) for turning or wire EDM to produce undersized features without remodeling, and much improved performance on the largest part files with hundreds of thousands of entities.

The full day session, presented by senior application engineers will be shown on line at XXXXXXXX.

For further information contact Delcam at 1 877 335 2261 or visit www.delcam.tv/lz

On November 14, Partners in THINC hosted the Capital Spending Survey & Forecast event, which featured a presentation by Gardner Publications’ Director of Market Intelligence, Steven Kline, Jr. In his presentation, Mr. Kline provided detailed analysis of trends in the metalcutting industry, including areas of anticipated growth, indices that affect the markets, and expected spending for various machinery types. Attendees from local manufacturing companies, Partners in THINC, Okuma and its distributors had the opportunity to ask questions and spend one-on-one time with Mr. Kline for even more detailed discussions. If you weren’t able to attend this event, Mr. Kline’s presentation, details of the survey that was used to collect the data and other valuable forecasting resources are all available on Gardner Publications’ website.

Partners in THINC is pleased to announce the addition of 3 new members-Busche Workholding, LNS and THINC Developers Group. Busche is an industry leader in the design and manufacture of hydraulic fixtures, commonly referred to as tombstones. LNS is best known for its bar feeding equipment and is also the industry’s single source supplier for chip conveyors, coolant management and high pressure systems, advanced work holding devices, tramp oil removal systems, oil mist collectors and other air quality products, and the e-Connect Ethernet communications system. THINC Developers Group provides a community for generating ideas, collaboration, promotion, and support of THINC-related technologies. These experts aid in the continuous improvement of the THINC®-OSPcontrol and develop applications to help manufacturers improve productivity through the use of the THINC control. To learn more about all of the members of Partners in THINC, including our three newest, please visit the website.

Fort Washington, PA – Today’s jobs situation seems to be a tail of two markets. On one hand, nationwide unemployment is hovering near record highs at over 9%. On the other hand, advanced CNC manufacturers are having a hard time finding the skilled help they need to meet customer demands in the face of increased part complexity, reduced lot sizes and shorter lead times. While many leading trade magazines tout the benefits of multi-tasking Turn-Mill Centers and Swiss-type lathes, actual end users of these machines are finding harder and harder to find the skilled personnel to take advantage of the productivity benefits these machines have to offer.

“Catch phrases like ‘done in one’, ‘dropping the part complete’ and ‘one hit machining’ are becoming more and more common in the industry,” says PartMaker Inc. division President Hanan Fishman. “However, while the machines capable of achieving these results are becoming more common place, the skills to take advantage of the unique benefits multi-tasking equipment are becoming harder to find. As a result, we here at PartMaker are bringing our unique resources to help manufacturers get more out of their multi-tasking Turn-Mill Centers and Swiss-type lathes by offering our training services for free or at reduced cost.”

The PartMaker Inc. division of Delcam Plc wants to do all it can to help close this skills gap by offering free or reduced cost training on its software. Free classroom training for one student will be provided to any new or existing customer ordering over $10,000 worth of software. For customers only wish to be trained, PartMaker Inc. will offer a 20% discount to its standard training rates. To take advantage of this offer, customers need only place their order in 2011, but can actually take the training in 2012 if they wish.

Training on PartMaker CAM software for multi-axis Turn-Mill and Swiss applications is as unique as the software itself. Training classes are specifically focused on the issues related to multi-axis turning. All classes are taught by PartMaker’s application engineers, engineers with decades of combined experience in CAD/CAM applications and practical CNC programming.

More on PartMaker
PartMaker is a Knowledge Based Machining system, allowing it to provide a substantial gain in programming efficiency by remembering the tools, material and process information necessary to machine individual part features. It thus relieves the user from reentering the same features information for subsequent parts. It also improves productivity by placing the emphasis on tool management functions.

PartMaker pioneered the field of CAM software for Turn-Mills and Swiss-type lathes with its patented Visual Programming Approach for programming multi-axis lathes with live tooling. It assures quicker learning and easier use. It makes an extensive use of pictures to help the user describe tools, part features and machining data. Synchronization of tools working on multiple spindles is achieved by a few mouse clicks.

PartMaker Inc. is a subsidiary of Delcam Plc, the world’s leading developer and supplier of complete CAD/CAM software solutions. Delcam Plc is publicly traded on the AIM exchange in London. While PartMaker is sold direct in North America by PartMaker Inc. PartMaker is sold overseas through a network of sales partner offices operating in over 120 countries.

PartMaker’s applications team provides end user training in facilities in Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia