Imts 2006

[ajl6549]

So who's been there and what did you think? I went sat. it was cool. Mazak's site was good,they had a Vari-axis doing a 5-axis demo. HAAS had about 25 machines, all in cut on demos, seen some that I've never seen before.

[fpworks]

Just got back in town tonight after three days, and that still wasn't long enough. I can't really say there was any truly groundbreaking technology on hand, just refinements of what already exists. Here is what impressed me:

*Haas actually had 45 machines on display. (!)

*Bridgeport XR1000 (renamed VMC 1000 XP3)...I didn't expect to see a 40 taper, linear bearing machine cut 1" deep x 1" wide through 4140 steel at 17 inches/minute, and sound so good doing it. (some displays were pushing the machines too hard, but not in this case)

*Hardinge direct drive rotary indexer...950 rpm indexing. (wow...almost makes your fourth axis a lathe spindle...well, not quite, but pretty darn good)

*Renishaw automated CMM, cuts the manual CMM inspection time from a Ford engine block from 55 minutes to 5 minutes...it won't be available for another 3 months.

*Lots of 5 axis profiling demos, way cool.

*Show specials on machine pricing...common to see 20% off the demo machine tools.

*Sandik's ice bar.

*Chick's new concept single station vice. Truly a departure from traditional vice construction...I think it will replace my Kurt 3600V when it goes to production. I also spent some time with the president of Chick, he is very knowledgeable on his product and showed me some things that will increase my productivity on my older Chick vises, as well as the big improvments to their System 5 product line.

*Faro's laser survey machine. It took a 3D photograph (point cloud) of the entire hall in a little over 2 minutes. Fairly low resolution, but very incredible.

*Hyundia's "woman" machining demo. (you know exactly what I'm talking about if you walked anywhere near this booth)

*Battlebot vs clothes dryer. No kidding, a full size clothes dryer went across the ring like it got hit by a car going 45mph after this robot smacked it. Then, it continued to attack the rest of the dryer and you couldn't recognize it 2 minutes later. Hysterical!


...and the whole show. Saw lot of old friends and got lots of great information on tooling and other manufacturing applications. Most of the applications guys really knew their product and were real enthusiastic, even after being at the show for so long. I was there only to shop for another VMC, but realized the wealth of information to be had on other processes only on the last day, so I wished that I had more time at the show.

I really appreciate the hard work the exhibitors put into the displays...well worth the trip! I am sorry to hear that the show will only last six days next time.

Justin

[ajl6549]

Did you see "eve" at the Allied Machine booth?

[Dan B]

Did you see "eve" at the Allied Machine booth?

Yes. Very nice.

I spent a serious amount of time in the CAD/CAM area on Friday. I was very impressed with where WorkNC is headed with version 19, and equally impressed with NX Cam Express from UGS. Winning a 6" Starrett dial caliper wasn't too hard to take either.

Dan

[ajl6549]

One of the guys i was with won an i-pod nano at a tooling booth not sure which though. They showed a film then had a drawing.