The new online tool will establish what development is needed amongst existing staff, as well as help support recruitment of further CNC Operators

Sector skills agency Semta has developed diagnostic tools to combat one of the biggest skills challenges facing engineering companies and subcontractors.

A new diagnostic tool, specifically developed by The National Skills Academy for Manufacturing, will identify the current competence levels of machinists.

CNC operators play a critical role in the majority of engineering and manufacturing businesses, and are at the very core of engineering businesses, responsible for cutting, drilling, shaping and finishing products and components. Typically, their job involves programming the machine tool with data taken from technical drawings, setting cutting speeds and tolerance levels, carrying out the operations and ensuring items meet quality and technical standards.

The new online tool will establish what development is needed amongst existing staff, as well as help support recruitment of further CNC Operators, helping stamp out the skills gaps that businesses are facing and determine the training needs of workforces. It has been developed following the release of Semta’s ‘Skills and the future of UK Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies’ earlier this year, which reveals 21 per cent of UK engineering establishments have skills gaps within their workforce. Technical skills, including CNC machine operators, are where businesses are seeing the most gaps.

Now in its final stages of development, Semta is calling on businesses to take part in a pilot programme. The pilot will allow engineering businesses that are experiencing CNC operator skills gaps to test the online tool and feedback on how easy they find it to use, and training recommendations they are implementing as a result.

Philip Whiteman, Chief Executive of Semta said: “In listening to employer feedback, we realised that engineering companies are facing a real challenge in ensuring that CNC operators have the right skills. This tool will help employers work out if their employees lack the skills they need and to what extent, and, with the guidance of a Semta representative, put appropriate training in place to address it.

“The pilot programme will ensure that when we roll the tool out more widely, it is precisely in line with the needs of employers.”

http://www.engineeringcapacity.com/news101/business-news/diagnosing-cnc-skills-gaps

Taichung is located in the central of Taiwan. The production of CNC machine tool is 40,000 each year for customers all over the world leads Taichung to become a vital city of machine tools. Several advantages make an edge for Taichung, such as the flexible and customized manufacturing, competitive pricing, the complete satellite-factories processing system, rapid supply chain, and easy access to the accessories. Nowadays, Taiwan machine tool industry provides more than 70% of total production for foreign markets, which can be applied in mechanical industry, defense industry, automotive industry, aerospace industry, electronic components mold, and green power & wind energy industry, etc., and meet all of the demand for metal cutting and metal forming processes.

In the wave of Asian currencies rise, NTD is more stable compared to other Asian currencies. Therefore, Taiwan machine tool is able to offer relative stable pricing. Furthermore, the users can be competitive by being offered with lower price equipment and can have relative lower production cost as well.

For the first time, Taiwan Machine Tool Show (TMTS), organized by Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders’ Association (TMBA), is going to be held at Taichung ShuiNan Economic and Trade Park on Nov. 3-7, 2010 with a total of 300 local and foreign exhibitors filled 1,300 booths with 22,950 sqm. The organizer hopes to bring the unique industry feature into play, and satisfy the demand of foreign buyers not only in show visiting & factor visiting, but also in city tour.

Taiwan Machine Tool Show (TMTS) is planned by 5 professional zones, including (1) Metal Cutting Machines; (2) Metal Forming Machines; (3) Components, Accessories, Parts, Cutters, Measuring Instruments, Molds, and Softwares; (4) Automation & Robotics, and Peripheral Equipment; (5) International Associations & Media.

All exhibitors at TMTS are the experts from Taiwan machine tool and accessory industry. The CNC machine tool sector will be present in a large-scaled, composite-typed and multi-axial way, which is different from the other shows. Meanwhile, it takes less than an hour to the companies of exhibitors from the show ground, which provides intimate contact for purchasing and visiting,

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20101019007707/en/TMBA-Taichung-Important-City-Machine-Tools

Fanuc has developed a function that makes it easier to use robots with machine tools. For example, it allows robot status and program selection to be displayed and adjusted on a CNC screen. Conversely, the robot control screen can display CNC-specific information.

Machine operators can use the function to call up a menu in the CNC control which provides them with information on the status of a robot, including alarms and maintenance alerts. They can also select and load programs and activate the robot without operating a separate robot control directly. This is said to save time and enhance safety.

A menu in the robot operator console provides access to the machine tool controller. This is said to be particularly useful for setting up a robot during the pre-production phase, because it gives the programmer information on the status of the machine axes to identify potential conflicts ahead of time.

http://www.drives.co.uk/fullstory.asp?id=3020

The Computer Numerical Controls (CNC) market imploded during 2009. After nearly seven years of continued growth leading up to the financial crisis in 2008, the CNC market had surpassed the $6 billion mark. The seven-year growth cycle of the CNC market came to a dramatic halt in the last quarter of 2008 as a result of the global financial crisis, the bankrupt automotive sector, and collapse of oil prices.

“The Computer Numerical Control market in 2009 reflects how the market reacted to these adversities. However, it is equally important to plan for the rebound,” according to research director Sal Spada, the principal author of ARC’s “Computer Numerical Controls Worldwide Outlook”.

Capital Equipment Surplus
During the rapid growth period, machine tool builders scaled up businesses for what seemed to be a new level of demand for capital equipment in the market. Many of the serial machine builders in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan built up inventory in the channel, creating a tremendous surplus in machinery that would not be depleted until the second quarter in 2010. Furthermore, manufacturers that had purchased capital equipment to meet the increasing demand for finished goods were faced with overcapacity in their operations.

Machine Tool Builders Suffer
The economic downturn hit the discrete manufacturing industries particularly hard, placing enormous business pressure on the OEM machine tool builders that serve these industries. In today’s tight, risk-averse, capital environment, end-user manufacturers only purchase new equipment when they can no longer effectively redeploy existing equipment, delaying capital equipment purchases until the last possible moment. The recession that began in 2008 significantly impacts the way today’s manufacturers conduct business.  Pressure points mount for machine tool builders of standard machines and custom-engineered machines, as past business models no longer match current economic realities.

Emerging Markets Drive Future Growth
The regions that will experience the largest growth over the next several years will be South America and Asia. Western Europe will continue to remain a dominant region, but the focus will remain on the high-performance and high-valued machinery. Over the course of the forecast period it is expected that the emerging markets will expand beyond the low valued machinery market and make inroads into the midrange performance in machine tools. This is inevitable as the domestic manufacturers seek to improve their manufacturing competency.

http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/26928/Worldwide-CNC-market-implodes

VERICUT 7.1 features significant enhancements to reduce the time required for manufacturing engineers to easily develop, analyze, inspect and document the CNC programming and machining process. Along with proactively adding new features, CGTech developers and engineers focused on addressing hundreds of customer-driven enhancements.

“VERICUT 7.1 builds on CGTech’s highly successful VERICUT 7.0 release and subsequent point releases that contained over 700 customer requests delivered throughout 2010,” said CGTech Ltd Managing Director, John Reed, “Version 7.1 contains nearly 200 customer requests and further improvements to VERICUT’s user interaction, simulation capabilities & analysis, cutting tool creation, and CAD/CAM integration.”

A few of the many features coming in VERICUT 7.1 include the ability to record and display cutting conditions, the addition of multiple turning orientations and specialty cutting methods, and improvements to simulating complex subroutines and advanced CNC control features in VERICUT. There has also been an emphasis placed on simplifying the creation of VERICUT reports. With the new VERICUT report enhancements, users can preview and customize their own reports to include features such as pictures, videos, links to files and WebPages. These reports have become increasingly valuable for VERICUT users to share CNC machining process information throughout their organization and supply chain.

VERICUT 7.1 is currently being beta tested and is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2010.

About CGTech

Headquartered in Irvine, California CGTech specializes in numerical control (NC/CNC) simulation, verification, optimization and analysis software technology for manufacturing. Since 1988 CGTech’s product, VERICUT® software, has become the industry standard for simulating CNC machining in order to detect errors, potential collisions or areas of inefficiency. CGTech is a global brand with European operations in UK, Germany, France and Italy, VERICUT software is used by companies of all sizes, universities and government agencies. For more information, visit the CGTech website at cgtech.com, call +44 (0)1273 773538.

Location:

Hampshire jobs

Salary:

Salary £12.01 per hour

Date posted:

05/10/2010 14:10

Sector:

Commercial jobs

Job role:

Mechanical engineer jobs

Job type:

Contract jobs

Company:

Matchtech Group plc

Contact:

Gary Weston

Ref:

CareerStructure/220236GMW

Job ID:

48698782

Norfolk-based precision subcontract manufacturing specialist Tml has invested in a Doosan MX 2100-ST mill-turn centre supplied by Mills CNC. The investment is a critical element in Tml’s continuous improvement programme which has recently seen the company gain full BS EN9100 approval.

Tml managing director Neil Dyer says: “Ever since Tml was established over 14 years ago, our number one focus has always been on providing quality to our customers. The BS EN9100 accreditation reflects and recognises this.

“Achieving the BS EN9100 approval also provides further evidence, especially to the new customers we have in our sights, that Tml has the skills, technologies, processes and people in place to deliver the high-quality, reliable and cost-competitive manufacturing solutions they require.”

Already established in the motorsport, pharmaceutical and security sectors, acquiring BS EN9100 and the machine investment are part of Tml’s ongoing strategy to secure higher-value defence and aerospace precision manufacturing contracts.

Tml identified that one of its older mill-turn machines was affecting overall performance. Tml embarked on a search to find a replacement as Mr Dyer explains: “We approached a number of machine tool suppliers but liked the look, versatility and multi-axis simultaneous machining capabilities of the Doosan ‘one-hit’ MX 2100-ST machine.

“We recognised that the MX’s Y-axis (off-centre machining) and B-axis (milling of angled surfaces) would provide us with a machine capable of handling a huge and diverse range of complex parts.

“We could also see that the machine’s lower turret would be invaluable in helping reduce part cycle times and, as a consequence, improve our lead and delivery times.

“And finally, because we manufacture parts in relatively high-volumes and to such high-precision, it was important that the machine would give us the high levels of accuracy and repeatability we required.”

Image: Mr Dyer (left) receives the company’s BS EN9100 certificate from Mark Stokes (middle) , BSI area manager, with Andrew Bolton (right), Tml’s QA consultant in attendance.

http://www.machinery.co.uk/article/28284/Machining-subcontractor-invests-in-a-Doosan-CNC-mill-turn-centre.aspx

There is a range of CNC milling machines available from CVW Engineering :

• Okuma MU400VA feature a 5 axis vertical machine centre, 32 station tool magazine, through spindle coolant, infrared set-up. They have a Capacity of 760 x 460 x 460.
• Okuma MA40 HA CNC milling machines have twin pallets, 4 axis horizontal, infrared auto zero off-set/ auto gauging measuring probe, 60 station tool magazine, spindle capacity- 580 x 610 x 580.
• HAAS 4 Axis CNC milling machine centres, model VF3.
• Zayer 20KM4000 Travelling Column Table 4000 x 1000, Heindenhein control, capacity- 2400 x 1200 x 1500.
• Maho 400 CNC milling machines, 3 axis vertical and horizontal machining centre.
• Maho MH12000S CNC milling machines feature 5 axis, vertical and horizontal with digitizer, 60 station tool magazine, infrared measuring probe. Their capacity is 1200 x 600 x 600.
• Okuma MA600 HB Twin Pallet, 4 axis, 60 station tool magazine, through spindle coolant, infrared measuring probe.
• Okuma MX50 Twin Pallet Horizontal Machine Centre, 4 axis, 60 station tool magazine, through spindle coolant, infrared tool detection.
• 

  CNC milling machines
• http://www.ferret.com.au/c/CVW-Engineering/CNC-milling-machines-from-CVW-Engineering-n898269

Precision machine building company MDC Max Daetwyler AG and specialist water jet company Waterjet AG, in collaboration with NUM, have developed an innovative CNC-based water jet cutting machine capable of cutting materials to within ±1 micron which is 20 times more accurate than competitive machines.

The WOMAJET/microWATERJET machine provides a stable, precise and repeatable manufacturing process capable of creating complex contours, coping with land widths as narrow as 0.02 mm. The machine uses a very high precision water jet, with a diameter of less than 0.30 mm, and can cut materials at a rate of up to 4,000 mm per minute.

All three of the machine’s axes are driven by NUMDrive C servos; these have a high power density, which helps minimise the size of the control cabinet. Overall control of the machine is handled by a NUM Flexium CNC system, equipped with a NUM FS152i HMI for operator input commands.

The WOMAJET/microWATERJET cutting machine can accommodate a diverse range of materials from biocompatible materials for medical applications; Kevlar, carbon- and glass-fibre materials such as those used in the automotive industry; and the type of specialised materials and laminates used in aerospace. In each case, all cutting operations are performed with no degradation to the materials’ characteristics or properties.

One unusual application that is already generating considerable interest is for cutting precision components for the watch-making industry with mechanical watches from prestigious Swiss manufacturers currently enjoying a renaissance.

http://www.machinery.co.uk/article/28239/Innovative-CNC-based-water-jet-cutting-with-one-micron-accuracy.aspx