“What we are seeing is a trend toward quick change and the ability to change from part to part within families with little or no setup, especially for a rejuvenated auto industry,” said Jeff Estes, director, Partners in THINC (Charlotte, NC). “We’ve been adamant in telling people that workholding is one of the essential components that they have to consider in automat- ing a process, along with good tooling, good chip control, and some feedback mechanism that provides real time feedback for automatic compensation.”
Okuma, like other machine tool builders and their distribu- tors, has embraced the need for intelligent systems that en- able communication of data in real time from their processes. As a result, third-party supplied devices of everything from workholding, in-process measuring devices, software and chip management systems are readily integrated into machine tool processes that feature open architecture control. “Those solutions come from our Partners in THINC and the ability of their products to be integrated into the machine
Vero-S quick-change pallet systems are available for just about every machining process.
tool system. It’s a universal trend across machine tools to try to get intelligent systems to talk to each other,” said Estes. “All of this relates to the trend toward automation and the workholding required to make the automated systems work. Workholding must be automation-friendly and agile, able to be used with a bar feeder, an FMS or a simple or complicated robotic system. Workholding is becoming a component of a larger automation package. So people are looking at it differ- ently today,” said Estes.
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