Contact us today:
(847) 934-4500
tdaro@bernardandcompany.com
Contact us today:
(847) 934-4500
tdaro@bernardandcompany.com
See Rattunde in Hall 6, Stand E-40 at Tube Fair in Dusseldorf, April 7-11, 2014!
Major German supplier of finished length tube and solid bar processing equipment offers dual tube cutting and finishing in one setup; produces up to 5000 pieces per hour with up to 40% energy savings
Rattunde ACS + CFMtwin machine for simultaneous dual tube processing; can produce up to 5000 parts per hour
Rattunde Corporation, a German-based manufacturer of finished length tube and solid bar production, today announces the introduction of the ACS® + CFMtwin machine, the newest member in the company’s family of tube production systems. Equipped with a specially-designed twin machining head that fits onto the standard head, this new machine can cut two tube or bar sections simultaneously, then machines both ends of both workpieces, also simultaneously. This new Rattunde machine can produce up to 5000 finished pieces per hour. The option also exists for single tube or bar production on the same machine.
The ACS® + CFMtwin machine, when in twin mode, can process two workpieces of 10mm to 41.5mm OD each into finished lengths from 10mm to 1500mm. Example: 21mm OD x 3.5mm wall x 45mm length cut from a 6.5 meter mill length of stock material, based on carbon steel. When the twin head is removed, the standard machining head can process a single workpiece up to 105mm OD.
Close-up of twin cutting head; machine cuts two workpieces simultaneously
In addition to the twin workpiece processing, this new Rattunde machine offers the OEM or production house all the capabilities found on Rattunde’s ACS® family of tube and bar production systems, including secondary brush deburring, end machining (chamfering and facing), inspection, washing, drying and robotic packaging. The entire machine and all auxiliary workstations are motion-controlled by CNC from a single operator station for maximum efficiency. The ACS® + CFMtwin is built on the same platform as the existing and popular Rattunde ACS® + CFM and ACS + CFMcurve systems.
Even when processing in twin mode, the setup time for a new job can be under 15 minutes, according to Rattunde engineering. Other standard features on this new Rattunde machine include data management on all workpiece parameters (approx. 10,000 workpieces), data logging of every part produced for full part traceability, material lead and end edge detection for minimized crop cut and tag end. All operating limits are set from the control panel, with continuous tool break monitoring for the saw blade and all cutting tools.
Each end of the two workpieces is simultaneously chamfered before automated transfer to the cleaning and final packaging stations
Alec Banish, director of business development at the company, states, “This new machine clearly gives us a decided advantage in the market for high-production requirements. Plus, with the standard machining head still in place on the machine, the ACS® + CFMtwin can be a highly flexible, adaptable production system for many types of manufacturing operations as well as a wide variety of end product producers.”
Because the machine offers essentially double the production in the same machine footprint, up to 40% energy savings have been documented on a 25mm OD x 3mm wall x 42mm long piece from a stock length of 6 meters in a typical batch count of 45,000.
For more information on this development, please contact:
RATTUNDE CORPORATION
4980 Kendrick Street SE
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49512
Phone: 616-940-3340
Fax: 616-940-2771
Web: www.rattunde-corp.com
Email: company@rattunde-corp.com
Attention: Richard Stadler or Alec Banish
Did you miss Siemens at AeroDef 2014? Here’s what you missed!
At this year’s AERODEF conference in Long Beach, California, Siemens will demonstrate new CNC solutions and services for machine tool builders and end-users. Under the theme, “Productivity in motion,” the presentation will focus on turnkey solutions for the aerospace manufacturing industry.
For the aerospace market, the Sinumerik 840D sl offers the latest in CNC technology that increases machine tool performance and user productivity. The 840D sl is a universal and flexible CNC system based upon the innovative Sinamics S120 drive platform that can be used for up to 31 axes. It is a distributed, scalable, open and inter-connecting system offering a wide range of specialized functions for milling, drilling, turning, grinding, handling and robotics technologies. It offers users innovative features that increase productivity on the manufacturing floor, especially the challenging aerospace segments of high-speed and five-axis machining.
For the job shop, the Sinumerik 828D numerical control is the ideal CNC solution for mid-range machine tools. It is designed to address the needs of complex milling and turning machines in the job shop segment by combining CNC, PLC, operator panel and axis control for six CNC measurement circuits into a single, robust operator panel.
The 828D is capable of full graphical, high-level language command and supports ISO programming that is customary in the United States. Programming time can be further reduced for small-batch production with the use of the ShopMill and ShopTurn graphical workstep programming system, while high-level language programming can be used in conjunction with programGuide to significantly reduce programming times for large-scale serial production.
With the introduction of the Sinumerik 828D, extensive online help animations and a new type of input prompting system with moving picture sequences provide the basis for exceptional user convenience. USB, Compact Flash (CF) card and Ethernet ports enable high-speed data transfers onto storage media or integration of the control system into corporate networks.
SOLUTIONS FOR CNC TRAINING
Recently introduced to the American machine tool industry, and based upon the new Sinumerik Operate graphical user interface, SinuTrain is the ideal solution for control-identical CNC training.
With SinuTrain, actual NC programs are developed and simulated, to speed the program generation protocol. In this manner, machine tool operators not only learn the control language commands, but they also visualize part programs on a PC screen that are identical to the machine tool’s screen. As an additional benefit, programs generated through SinuTrain can then be used on actual machines.
Offered in several languages, SinuTrain is available for different needs and budgets including a trial version, a study version, a single-user license and an educational license.
For more information about advanced CNC solutions for the aerospace industry,
please visit: www.usa.siemens.com/aerodef-pr.
Download this article as a PDF: Siemens AeroDef14
Download the Siemens Aerospace Brochure: Siemens Aerospace
Download the SINUMERIK Integrate Run MyRobot Brochure: SINUMERIK Run MyRobot
For specific product information and inquiries, call (800) 879-8079 ext. Marketing Communications or send an e-mail to: SiemensMTBUMarCom.industry@siemens.com.
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SiemensCNC or Twitter: www.twitter.com/siemens_cnc_us.
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Siemens Industry Sector is the world’s leading supplier of innovative and environmentally friendly products, solutions and services for industrial customers. With end-to-end automation technology and industrial software, solid vertical-market expertise, and technology-based services, the sector enhances its customers’ productivity, efficiency and flexibility. With a global workforce of more than 100,000 employees, the Industry Sector comprises the Industry Automation, Drive Technologies and Customer Services Divisions as well as the Metals Technologies Business Unit. For more information, visit http://www.usa.siemens.com/industry.
The Siemens Drive Technologies Division is the world’s leading supplier of products, systems, applications, solutions and services for the entire drive train, with electrical and mechanical components. Drive Technologies serves all vertical markets in the production and process industries as well as the infrastructure/energy segment. With its products and solutions, the division enables its customers to achieve productivity, energy efficiency and reliability. For more information, visit http://www.usa.siemens.com/drivetechnologies.
Continue readingDid you miss Siemens at AeroDef 2014? Here’s what you missed!
Technology breakthroughs establish new flexibility and productivity paradigms for working with 2D data and massive assemblies. New functionality expands NX leadership in freeform shape design, PLM integration, and product development decision making.
AeroDef 2014 – The latest version of Siemens NX™ software (NX 9) includes new capabilities and technological breakthroughs that deliver enhanced product development flexibility and up to five times higher productivity across multiple industries. New tools like synchronous technology for 2D greatly facilitate 2D data editing. The introduction of fourth generation design (4GD) technology will enhance design productivity for massive assemblies.
And NX Realize Shape™ software delivers a new state-of-the-art freeform design toolset with unmatched product development integration. NX 9 also includes tighter PLM integration through Siemens’ Active Workspace environment, as well as multiple enhancements throughout the integrated CAD/CAM/CAE solution. The enhancements in NX 9 are aimed at creating value by addressing issues common to multiple industries such as automotive, aerospace, shipbuilding, consumer products, machinery and others.
“NX 9 represents a very significant step forward for Siemens, our customers, and for product development in general,” said Jim Rusk, senior vice president, Product Engineering Software, Siemens PLM Software. “With significant new breakthroughs such as synchronous technology for 2D, 4GD and NX Realize Shape, we are offering our customers unprecedented design flexibility while significantly increasing their product development productivity. And by leveraging our successful Active Workspace solution, we are enhancing the high definition user experience that helps our customers make smarter decisions that result in better products.”
While 3D modeling is the preferred method of product design throughout the world,
2D drawings and 2D product data – in a wide variety of digital formats – are still used in virtually every industry in some aspects of product development. Unfortunately, due to incompatible data structures and inconsistent CAD technology, working with these 2D files is typically tedious and time consuming. Synchronous technology for 2D eliminates these problems by adding intelligence to 2D data without the need for translation, enabling users to intuitively edit multi-CAD 2D files up to five times faster. This can be particularly useful for industries such as automotive, aerospace, machinery and others with large amounts of legacy 2D product data.
“Siemens’ synchronous technology for 2D is a Next Generation 2D tool that ad- dresses many of the downfalls of drafting and sketching,” said Chad Jackson, Principal Analyst for Lifecycle Insights, a leading PLM research and advisory firm. “It ‘understands’ the geometric relationships inherent in 2D drawings and applies user-controlled assumptions at the point of change to enable intelligent modifications. It also applies these assumptions locally instead of globally to ensure fast performance.”
The new NX Realize Shape offering in NX 9 provides a unique freeform design environment for producing products with highly stylized shapes or complex surfaces. It is the industry’s only solution that seamlessly integrates the most advanced, easy-to-use, flexible tools for performing freeform design, with a leading CAD/CAM/CAE software package. As a result, companies producing a wide variety of consumer products – as well as those in the aerospace, medical and marine industries – can shorten product development time by eliminating the multiple steps associated with using separate tools for freeform design and engineering development.
Hundreds of additional enhancements throughout NX 9 touch every aspect of CAD, CAM and CAE. The introduction of 4GD, a new design and data management paradigm that enables versatile and efficient methods for collaboration and design-in- context, accelerates the development of complex large-scale products containing millions of components. The embedding of Active Workspace 2.0, the innovative new interface to Siemens’ Teamcenter® software, enables NX 9 users to quickly find relevant information – parts, tasks, workflows, requirements and specifications – even from multiple external data sources.
New NX CAE tools improve thermal simulation of aircraft engines, reducing the time to setup complex boundary conditions by 75 percent. A new NX CAE parallel thermal solver provides improved performance on large-scale models delivering faster results. Enhancements in NX Nastran® software, the premier FEA solver for computational performance, accuracy, and scalability, enable noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) simulation times to be cut in half.
New capabilities in NX for manufacturing provide enhanced control for faster and more flexible CAM and CMM programming. For die/mold machining, the new cut region management capability provides graphical user interaction for more efficient programming, up to 40 percent faster for some complex parts, and precise control over machining strategies. The new multiple-part programming capability lets programmers reuse machining sequences across any number of similar parts in a setup. For example, a setup with six identical parts can be programmed up to four times faster. The new MRL Connect for NX, connects NX CAM directly to the Manufacturing Resource Library (MRL) in Teamcenter to give programmers easy access to a shared library of standard tools, fixtures, and templates. The CMM Inspection Programming capabilities have been expanded beyond solids to support sheet metal parts, delivering manufacturers in the aerospace and defense, high tech electronics, and automotive industries a highly automated inspection programming solution.
NX 9 is available immediately. For more detailed information on all the new functionality in NX 9, please visit www.siemens.com/plm/nx9.
Download this article as a PDF: NX 9
Download th
About Siemens PLM Software
Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division, is a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services with seven million licensed seats and more than 71,000 customers worldwide. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Siemens PLM Software works collaboratively with companies, delivering open solutions to help them make smarter decisions that result in better products. For more information on Siemens PLM Software products and services, visit www.siemens.com/plm
For more information on Siemens SINUMERIK CNC, visit www.usa.siemens.com/cnc.
For specific product information and inquiries, call (800) 879-8079 ext. Marketing Communications or send an e-mail to: SiemensMTBUMarCom.industry@siemens.com.
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SiemensCNC or Twitter: www.twitter.com/siemens_cnc_us.
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Siemens Industry Sector is the world’s leading supplier of innovative and environmentally friendly products, solutions and services for industrial customers. With end-to-end automation technology and industrial software, solid vertical-market expertise, and technology-based services, the sector enhances its customers’ productivity, efficiency and flexibility. With a global workforce of more than 100,000 employees, the Industry Sector comprises the Industry Automation, Drive Technologies and Customer Services Divisions as well as the Metals Technologies Business Unit. For more information, visit http://www.usa.siemens.com/industry.
The Siemens Drive Technologies Division is the world’s leading supplier of products, systems, applications, solutions and services for the entire drive train, with electrical and mechanical components. Drive Technologies serves all vertical markets in the production and process industries as well as the infrastructure/energy segment. With its products and solutions, the division enables its customers to achieve productivity, energy efficiency and reliability. For more information, visit http://www.usa.siemens.com/drivetechnologies.
Continue readingDid you miss Siemens at AeroDef 2014? Here’s what you missed!
AeroDef 2014 – Siemens Industry Software announced today availability of a new version of their leading Operations Management System for Assembly and Complex Manufacturing.
Already an established benchmark in the market, the introduction of version 3.2 of this comprehensive suite consolidates Siemens at the forefront of production optimization software for the discrete manufacturing industry.
Built to deliver value right at the heart of the manufacturing facility, this powerful environment inherits the agility, speed, scalability and performance of the SIMATIC IT platform, providing customers with unparalleled out-of-the-box functionality and the flexibility to extend and tailor the solution to their needs.
Whether you are looking to reduce the complexity of your IT landscape, increase the agility and flexibility of your manufacturing facilities, render your production processes transparent and measurable, shorten time-to-market, streamline the link between shop-floor and supply chain or adapt to new regulations, SIMATIC IT is the right choice for your business.
The biggest opportunity for manufacturers lies in their ability to Continuously Innovate in a Consumer-driven market on a Global basis. This requires that manufacturing facilities are seamlessly integrated into both the PLM and Supply Chain processes, and this is where SIMATIC IT is of unique interest, for only Siemens has a comprehensive portfolio of Industry Software seamlessly integrating PLM, MOM and Automation functionality.
Siemens Industry Software presents the new version of its SIMATIC IT Suite for Assembly and Complex Manufacturing
SIMATIC IT ACM functionality includes:
SIMATIC IT ACM is part of the full Siemens Manufacturing Operations Management portfolio. The full range of SIMATIC IT products includes:
For more information about SIMATIC IT, please visit www.siemens.com/simaticit
Download this article as a PDF: SIMATIC IT ACM
Download the SIMATIC IT Assembly & Complex Manufacturing Brochure: SIM ATIC IT ACM
Download the SIMATIC IT Line Monitoring System Brochure: SIMATIC IT LMS
For inquiries, send an e-mail to: industrymanagement_simatic.it@siemens.com
Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/simaticit
For more information on Siemens SINUMERIK CNC, visit www.usa.siemens.com/cnc.
For specific product information and inquiries, call (800) 879-8079 ext. Marketing Communications or send an e-mail to: SiemensMTBUMarCom.industry@siemens.com.
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SiemensCNC or Twitter: www.twitter.com/siemens_cnc_us.
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Siemens Industry Sector is the world’s leading supplier of innovative and environmentally friendly products, solutions and services for industrial customers. With end-to-end automation technology and industrial software, solid vertical-market expertise, and technology-based services, the sector enhances its customers’ productivity, efficiency and flexibility. With a global workforce of more than 100,000 employees, the Industry Sector comprises the Industry Automation, Drive Technologies and Customer Services Divisions as well as the Metals Technologies Business Unit. For more information, visit http://www.usa.siemens.com/industry.
The Siemens Drive Technologies Division is the world’s leading supplier of products, systems, applications, solutions and services for the entire drive train, with electrical and mechanical components. Drive Technologies serves all vertical markets in the production and process industries as well as the infrastructure/energy segment. With its products and solutions, the division enables its customers to achieve productivity, energy efficiency and reliability. For more information, visit http://www.usa.siemens.com/drivetechnologies.
Continue readingMost standard products available from Chicago inventory
Heimatec BMT 65 live tooling-axial style
Heimatec, a world leader in live tools, angle heads and multi-spindle drill heads, today announces immediate availability of BMT (Base Mount Tooling) standard products from inventory at its Chicago-area headquarters for the North American market.
In addition to standard X and Z axis tools, styles such as adjustable tools, speed increasers and internal coolant tools with capabilities to 140 bar (2000 PSI) are now available in an assortment of standard BMT tooling types, including BMT 45, 55, 65 and 75.
Heimatec BMT 65 live tooling-radial style
All Heimatec BMT tooling is supplied with the company’s unique U-Tec® flexible machining system, which provides extremely high power transmission via polygonal drive. Integrated collet nut, with easy changeout, can convert the output to arbor (for face mills), Weldon or ER collet extensions. The U-Tec® system further allows the cutting tool to be in closer proximity to the bearing, which results in much higher rigidity. The cutting tools last longer and yield an improved finish, as a result of this Heimatec design feature.
All Heimatec BMT tooling is manufactured at the company’s home facility in Germany and is now carried in inventory in the Chicago-area facility, which serves the North American machine tool market.
Heimatec products are sold through authorized sales representatives and machine tool distributors in North America.
For further information and literature, or to arrange a demo of this product line, please contact:
Preben Hansen, President
HEIMATEC INC.
16 E. Piper Lane Suite 129
Prospect Heights, IL 60070
Phone: 847-749-0633
Fax: 847-749-2445
Email: info@heimatecinc.com
Website: www.heimatecinc.com
Connect with Heimatec Inc: 
Hi!
Here I am. Marketing Information Specialist/Director of Social Media/Blogger all rolled into one – a perfect storm dynamic combo of job titles and caffeine.
Social media 101: Social media is, um – social. It’s engagement – it’s a conversation and I’m finding it difficult to have that conversation in 140 characters or less (à la Twitter). So, Hi. I’m new here. Offer me greetings of salutations below or on Twitter or Facebook. As an extended voice of our advertising/PR agency, I want to show you that there’s more than meets the “i” in our industrial world [haha – get it?]! And I’ll show it to you one blog post at a time. I mean for these posts to vary in levels of information and entertainment. After all, we’re not just PR robots here at Bernard & Co!
Say ‘hi’ NOW! Do it!
I just used 745 characters and it felt glorious. I love you, Twitter – but you can’t hold me back!
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Our own Tim Daro recently presented at AFS Twin Cities Chapter meeting, The Many Ways to Market Your Foundry, in Minneapolis. The presentation covered different ways that foundries could promote themselves to current and prospective customers.
Topics included “old” methods of advertising (direct mail and trade shows), as well as the new methods of online advertising such as e-blasts, interactive e-brochures, social media such as Twitter, Facebook and especially the targeted LinkedIn groups. Bernard & Company has experience in all these areas, helping industry supplier giants such as Hunter Foundry Machinery and MAGMA, current and past foundry clients, improve their marketing communications.
We’d like to thank Joy Clifford and Josh Jaycox at the AFS Twin Cities Chapter for including us in their line-up and for the cool casting they gifted us!
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The American Foundry Society exists “to provide and promote knowledge and services that strengthen the metalcasting industry for the ultimate benefit of its customers and the Society.” The objective of the Twin Cities Chapter are those of the American Foundry Society, namely, “exclusively to advance through research and education the arts and sciences relating to the manufacturing and utilization of metal castings.”
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Siemens Industry, Inc. presents its new Sinumerik 808D Advanced CNC with compatible motors, drives and cabling, in vertical or horizontal variants for basic milling and turning machines
Siemens Industry, Inc. announced today its new Sinumerik 808D Advanced CNC, designed for basic milling and turning machines. Affordably priced for the machine builder (OEM), this new addition from Siemens offers a suite of design features to improve the accuracy, surface finish, safety and communication of the control. This new CNC is available now to the North American machine tool market.
The Sinumerik 808D Advanced offers up to five axes / spindle motion control on a single machine channel, with drive bus communication between the CNC and drive for better position control, data transfer over standard Ethernet protocol, plus Auto Servo Tuning (AST) for superior surface quality and repeatable part accuracy in mold and die applications. These include incremental encoder with 2,500 parts per revolution (ppr) or absolute encoder with 20-bit resolution.
Motor speeds up to 4,000 rpm are offered with Safe Torque Off (STO) and IP65 enclosure protection. Vertical and horizontal configurations of the Sinumerik 808D are available to suit all standard control panels.
The Sinumerik 808D Advanced T is the ideal choice for basic turning machines or turning centers without a Y-axis, with the option of driven tools, while the Sinumerik 808D Advanced M offers advanced surface finish and the SINAMICS V70 drive platform from Siemens, all with an attractive price-to-performance ratio.
Additional features of the Sinumerik 808D Advanced CNC include an RJ45 Ethernet port, 7.5” LCD color display with 640 x 480 resolution for easy viewing, machine technology-specific keyboards with hard keys shielded with protective membrane, a robust enclosure with no fan or hard disk, maintenance-friendly power with no battery, continuous data buffering with NV-RAM technology, LED tool number display and a master control panel with rotary switch for feed and spindle override. The rated torque is 1.9-40 Nm with drive line input of 400V and overload rating of 300 percent.
Part programs can be managed on an external PC, then fed to the control over an Ethernet cable or input via the USB port. Simple program sub-folders can be stored on the control, just like on the PC. Other standard features of the Siemens CNC for machine operators and programmers include intelligent jog, precise tool data handling with easy-to-recognize on-screen icons, tool wear data logging to ensure consistent high workpiece quality and startGUIDE engineering support, complete with the graphical user interface wizard for easier machine commissioning and startup and troubleshooting.
Siemens provides full training, on-site support and service plus a three-year warranty on parts and service. Proper machine registration is required.
For more information about the new Sinumerik 808D Advanced, please visit:
www.usa.siemens.com/808D-PR.
For more information on Siemens SINUMERIK CNC, visit www.usa.siemens.com/cnc.
For specific product information and inquiries, call (800) 879-8079 ext. Marketing Communications or send an e-mail to: SiemensMTBUMarCom.industry@siemens.com.
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SiemensCNC or Twitter: www.twitter.com/siemens_cnc_us.
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Siemens Industry Sector is the world’s leading supplier of innovative and environmentally friendly products, solutions and services for industrial customers. With end-to-end automation technology and industrial software, solid vertical-market expertise, and technology-based services, the sector enhances its customers’ productivity, efficiency and flexibility. With a global workforce of more than 100,000 employees, the Industry Sector comprises the Industry Automation, Drive Technologies and Customer Services Divisions as well as the Metals Technologies Business Unit. For more information, visit http://www.usa.siemens.com/industry.
The Siemens Drive Technologies Division is the world’s leading supplier of products, systems, applications, solutions and services for the entire drive train, with electrical and mechanical components. Drive Technologies serves all vertical markets in the production and process industries as well as the infrastructure/energy segment. With its products and solutions, the division enables its customers to achieve productivity, energy efficiency and reliability. For more information, visit http://www.usa.siemens.com/drivetechnologies.
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The three-martini lunch was a viable business meeting venue, when I got into the ad/PR biz in 1976. Accomplished a lot and, moreover, forged solid friendships.
My old boss and our agency founder WAS the guy from Mad Men, who sold the clients and had all the great ideas. 
At 82 and retired 27 years now, he STILL drinks martinis and is sharp and quick-witted as ever.
Today, we’re lucky to see clients more than a few times, each month. Email, conference calls and the vid conference or webinar are the norm, for us and clients. One web conferencing service runs TV commercials, actually mocking business travel as arcane, costly and pointless.
Who remembers the classic United campaign, where the boss handed out plane tix to the sales guys, admonishing them to get back to direct contact with customers? Business lunches are still conducted, but the business and social sides of client relationships have changed radically.
Wonder what others are experiencing, both on the agency and client sides, as well as in the media?
We ad/PR guys invented the three-martini lunch, of course, right after the golf outing and the last-minute deadline!
Happy New Year,
TD
Tom Curfiss details the rapidly evolving business climate for retrofit; impacting large production department, job shop machine tool sectors alike
Siemens retrofit
CHICAGO —Various market factors and economic conditions have made retrofitting existing machine tools a very viable option for the large metalworking department at an OEM, as well as the job shop sector of moldmakers, tool & die and contract part manufacturers alike, according to Tom Curfiss, the retrofit business development manager for Siemens. Speaking from his Cincinnati area office, Curfiss comments, “Today’s business climate has combined with economic factors involved in the manufacture of control packages to create an ideal atmosphere for retrofit. Our company has long been involved in the upgrade of large gantry mills for aerospace production, for example. But today, it’s just as likely you’ll find our Retrofit Solution Partners outfitting a 3-axis mill or even a basic lathe with a new entry-level or mid-range CNC, motor and drive package. And, the best news for the job shop, this work can now be done at a price point comparable to just the cost of the CNC a decade ago, owing to economies of scale in the manufacture of these control packages.”
Siemens currently has 17 Retrofit Solution Partners under contract in the U.S. These companies work in close cooperation with Siemens to fully understand the possibilities of retrofitting machines with SINUMERIK CNC and to provide complete services for the installation and refurbishment of the CNC machine. These partner firms for the Machine Tool Systems business at Siemens must have a demonstrated ability to work on CNC, PLC, servo motor, digital drive and all accompanying peripheral products, plus have a proficiency in the development of software packages related to PLC and CNC applications. Every Solution Partner then commits to a battery of training sessions on SINUMERIK controls and is required to keep at least two Siemens-trained engineers on staff at all times, according to Curfiss. The Solution Partners are not geographic specific, as several have proven expertise in the field working on particular types or brands of machine tools. The selection process for the appropriate partner takes many factors into consideration, says Curfiss. “We have partners who specialize in 5-axis machines, others who have expertise in a certain industry such as aerospace or medical, and still others who have their greatest strength in a particular area of the country. Depending on the job specifics and the logistic costs involved, we work hard to match the right partner to the customer’s needs.”
Typically, Curfiss continues, the tipping point on a retrofit job is 60% of the price of a new machine. However, he also points out that many machines have outdated controls, although they still perform adequately in the shop or production department. “The challenge, when we do our onsite machine evaluation, is to determine whether a retrofit will make an appreciable difference in the performance of the machine, as other factors in the mechanics of the iron might make a retrofit impractical.” Curfiss further noted that today’s control technology is evolving at a very rapid rate, making some equipment that went out of production just 10 years ago less than optimum in contributing to maximum machine tool performance. “Running machine tools with 20-year-old technology today will simply not keep a shop as competitive as it needs to be.”
Existing equipment
Tom Curfiss has had his share of experiences with “old iron” in the field, as his background in machine tools spans over 40 years. “A lot of people think their old iron is just impossible to keep running, even with a retrofit, but we’re able to make the old equipment run better than it did when it was new, quite often.” He notes this achievement is the result of faster control processors, improved motor and drive technology, even more accurate and responsive encoders and other machine status sensing devices. On a practical note, Curfiss also remarks, “You cannot, however, fix a broken leg with a bandage, so the machine evaluation needs to be very comprehensive.”
In the end, Tom Curfiss suggests, both the large production departments and the job shops alike need to have regular assessments done on their prototype and production machine tools to determine if a retrofit might be in order. “The savings can be substantial, compared to purchasing new machines, because it’s not just a matter of the dollars saved at the outset, it’s also the long-term production improvements that inevitably lead to even greate Tom Curfiss has had his share of experiences with “old iron” in the field, as his background in machine tools spans over 40 years. “A lot of people think their old iron is just impossible to keep running, even with a retrofit, but we’re able to make the old equipment run better than it did when it was new, quite often.” He notes this achievement is the result of faster control processors, improved motor and drive technology, even more accurate and responsive encoders and other machine status sensing devices. On a practical note, Curfiss also remarks, “You cannot, however, fix a broken leg with a bandage, so the machine evaluation needs to be very comprehensive.” In the end, Tom Curfiss suggests, both the large production departments and the job shops alike need to have regular assessments done on their prototype and production machine tools to determine if a retrofit might be in order. “The savings can be substantial, compared to purchasing new machines, because it’s not just a matter of the dollars saved at the outset, it’s also the long-term production improvements that inevitably lead to even greater profit for the job shop or OEM.”
For more information on Siemens SINUMERIK CNC, visit www.usa.siemens.com/cnc.
For specific product information and inquiries, call (800) 879-8079 ext. Marketing Communications or send an e-mail to: SiemensMTBUMarCom.industry@siemens.com. Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SiemensCNC or Twitter: www.twitter.com/siemens_cnc_us.
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Siemens Industry Sector is the world’s leading supplier of innovative and environmentally friendly products, solutions and services for industrial customers. With end-to-end automation technology and industrial software, solid vertical-market expertise, and technology-based services, the sector enhances its customers’ productivity, efficiency and flexibility. With a global workforce of more than 100,000 employees, the Industry Sector comprises the Industry Automation, Drive Technologies and Customer Services Divisions as well as the Metals Technologies Business Unit. For more information, visit http://www.usa.siemens.com/industry.
The Siemens Drive Technologies Division is the world’s leading supplier of products, systems, applications, solutions and services for the entire drive train, with electrical and mechanical components. Drive Technologies serves all vertical markets in the production and process industries as well as the infrastructure/energy segment. With its products and solutions, the division enables its customers to achieve productivity, energy efficiency and reliability. For more information, visit http://www.usa.siemens.com/drivetechnologies.
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