COMMENT
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Andrew Allcock, Editor
Looking for clues
Our comment piece last issue indicated that there was no strong
buzz at the EMO exhibition this year. That doesn’t mean there
wasn’t lots of great technology there, only that there was no out-ofthe
ordinary technological step up that galvanised attention.
I won’t run over what I wrote last time (https://is.gd/cicoya), but
rather will try to paint the general technological picture that EMO
provided. That picture in full can be gleaned in a number of features this issue,
specifically p14, p22 and p61. We’ll have more EMO news in future issues.
Mechanical machine tool innovation of itself is pretty challenging these days and
Machinery didn’t come across anything out of the ordinary at EMO – but it’s a big
show, so my apologies if I missed something.
Process innovation there continues to be, typically and as ever driven by new
industrial demands. That most mature of mechanical technologies the gear was one
such focus at EMO, driven by the needs of emobility and the requirement for highly
efficient and quiet drive chains. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Machine Tool Co had
news of “the world’s first generating internal gear grinder” for planetary internal gear
forms (https://is.gd/etojoh). It uses high speed spindles and barrel-shaped grinding
wheels to generate the required profile, as opposed to profile grinding it.
To improve machine performance and deliver process improvement, however, it is
often control technology and software that are brought to bear. DMG Mori and
Yamazaki Mazak demonstrated just that (p14), FANUC (p22), too.
Automation is very definitely now firmly entrenched, at least as part of the
technology armoury available. Again, our two global machine tool giants are pushing
hard there, as are robot makers like FANUC, but our cover story (p10) brings news of
a company offering affordable solutions to automate the more mundane.
In the tooling area, the use of additive manufacturing to deliver new solutions is a
definite trend (more next issue), while Ceratizit’s High Dynamic Turning already
covered by Machinery (https://is.gd/rijuxa) offered a real breakthrough for the turning
process (made possible through software and control advances allied to a mechanical
concept, it should be said).
But it is Industry 4.0, an amalgam of connected equipment, sensors and data,
where the broad push is. On connectivity, the ‘umati’ standard offers a plug-and-play
future (p22). On data, many machine tool makers offer machine data collection/
management/analysis software, but a solution is required that will work with all
brands – DMG Mori had news here. Finally, artificial intelligence in a variety of forms
was on view, making its appearance within Esprit CAM software (p61), Zyfra’s tool life
prediction offering (p22) plus Mazak (p14) and FANUC technology (p22). ■
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