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Industrial Tool show in Santa Clara

Posted by Andrew Werby
on 1999-11-18 03:54:01 UTC
I went to the Pacific Coast Industrial and Machine Tool show in Santa
Clara, CA last week, and since nobody else has, I thought I'd give my
impressions of what I saw there. I think this is an annual event, but it's
the first time I've gone, and it gave me an opportunity to see some of the
machines people have referred to on this list but I'd never seen in action.
There were large abrasive water-jet machines which were being used to cut
fancy patterns in 1" thick aluminum- it was interesting to watch (at least
for a while) because the particles would glow and sparkle as they contacted
the material. They also had some big EDM machines one could watch as they
pushed a graphite pattern into a block of steel- briefly- then eased up and
pushed again. And there were lots of big milling centers with turrets of 10
or so tools, furiously cutting steel at extremely high speeds. I'd never
realized why they put those enclosures around these things, but seeing them
in action was like looking into a washing machine- the coolant was gushing
around like a firehose.

NSK was there, with a set of hand-held air and electric powered tools that
did rotary grinding, reciprocal-action filing, belt-sanding, and even
"sonic cutting" - and some which would function as high or reduced speed
spindles for miniature milling machines. There was a company called MDSI
<www.mdsi2.com> which offered a pc-based machine control software system,
closing the servo loop in software and eliminating the motion-control card-
but it wasn't much lower in cost than proprietary systems like Fanuc and
Heidenhain. Flashcut was also there, showing off their new adaptation of
the Prazi mini-mill to CNC, (nice, but around $10k) as well as some
converted Sherlines and a Minitech.
There was a guy from Wedin International <www.wedin.com> who seemed very
knowledgable on the subject of ball-scews- they say they can come up with
replacement screws for any machine tool, and they also offer repairs. There
were lots of people selling cutting tools, about evenly split between
conventional types and those using inserts, but no extra-long ones-
although California Tool and Engineering <www.ctecaliforniatool.com> said
they could custom-make one up to 12" long if I wanted.

This show seemed targeted to the larger machine shops of Silicon Valley;
there wasn't really much for the hobbyist or even a small shop. Exceptions,
like the used gadget guy and the person demonstrating a $79 set of masonry
drills (he was good- I bought some myself) seemed to be attracting
considerable attention,though. There were some manual mills and lathes in
evidence, mostly Oriental in origin, but in general the action was in CNC.
The big software vendors were there- Mastercam, Surfcam, Solidworks-
selling mostly high-end solutions designed for professional machinists and
engineers. The most interesting software demonstration (to me, anyway) was
of a program called "Cimagrafi" (I think that's how it's spelled). It was a
combination raster-to-vector converter, heightfield generator, and
toolpath-writer which offered a high degree of control over the way areas
are defined and manipulated to form a 3d relief. What they did for their
demo was to scan the eagle seal off a dollar bill, work out the
relationships of the contours they popped out, and then used a large
MotionMaster CNC router (they split the booth with the router guys) to
carve a very nice-looking relief in wood, about an inch in depth and two
feet in diameter. The only other program I know of that does all this is
Artcam, which is more limited in its ability to relate one area to another,
and is (slightly) more expensive. This wasn't a cheap program by any means-
the collection of modules that I liked would retail for about $6500- but
its functionality was impressive. I'm going to sign on as a distrbutor, if
I can work it out with them, in which case I should be able to shave a
grand or so off the price.

The other thing I found very impressive was a laser machining center that
was being introduced by a German company called DMG <www.dmgamerica.com>.
This thing worked by vaporizing a couple of microns at a time of what ever
material they fed it, including ceramic, (it was making graphite disappear
at the time) resulting in an excellent surface finish without needing any
cutting tools. Also the beam can be focused down to .1mm, which makes it
possible to do very delicate work without disturbing delicate adjacent
features. They admit it was a little slow, so they are introducing another
unit (the DMU 60L) which combines this with conventional milling for
roughing out, leaving the laser for the finishing passes. Apparently these
things cost about a quarter-million each, although they say they will lower
the price some when they get going. They also make a gantry mill (the
Deckel-Maho 65V) along the same lines I was considering for the router I'm
building- making the z-axis slider like a box girder contained within a
frame and driven from both sides simultaneously- they say this eliminates
the "drawer effect" caused by driving it with only one screw.

Andrew Werby


Andrew Werby - United Artworks
Sculpture, Jewelry, and Other Art Stuff
http://unitedartworks.com

Discussion Thread

Andrew Werby 1999-11-18 03:54:01 UTC Industrial Tool show in Santa Clara