Mapal (Stand 330, Hall 18) will shine the spotlight on a range of newly developed drilling, reaming and tool-holding lines that will appear alongside solid-carbide and PCD cutting tools, as well as Industry 4.0 technologies.

For instance, to enhance hole-making performance for end users, Mapal has introduced its Drill-Ream product line. The underlying philosophy of Drill-Ream is to combine individual work steps to improve precision and consistency, reduce set-ups, and cut machining times. For machining bores on a range of materials that vary from cast iron through to aluminium, Drill-Ream incorporates a pyramid tip. The tool combines pilot drilling, drilling and subsequent bore reaming in a single pass.
For further information www.mapal.com

Among the machines being showcased by Ecoclean (Stand 660, Hall 6) will be the EcoCwave, which is designed for challenging aqueous cleaning tasks.

Offering immersion and spraying processes, the system has a vacuum-tight work chamber and is capable of anything from preliminary and intermediate washing, right up to precision cleaning. To achieve this flexibility, the machine comes with two or three tanks as standard. Each tank has a separate wash solution circuit with full-flow and bypass filtration. The design of the roll-over unit integrated in the work chamber ensures that all sides of the part to be cleaned are fully exposed to the wash solution during ultrasonic or spray cleaning.
For further information www.ecoclean-group.net

On the stand of Kawasaki Robotics (Stand 472, Hall 6), the company will provide an opportunity for visitors to take advantage of a confidential robotics advice service.

Show visitors who might be thinking of automating but are uncertain about whether it is necessary, viable, affordable or achievable, can meet with a Kawasaki Robotics expert for an independent assessment. To ensure that any advice provided is indeed absolutely independent, show visitors need not provide their name or company name when they meet with the Kawasaki Robotics experts, just their job function.
Ian Hensman of Kawasaki Robotics, who together with fellow industry stalwart Malcolm Akers, will be providing the service throughout every day of MACH 2020, says: “What matters here is independence and anonymity. This is not about selling robots, it is about providing experienced insight into the advantages and possible pitfalls in potential applications, and offering overarching guidance and advice in such a way that potential users can better validate their ideas before investing too much time, money and resource into taking things further.”
For further information https://robotics.kawasaki.com/

Vollmer will be demonstrating its circular saw-blade production expertise in Hall 20 on Stand 550 with the Vollmer CHX840/HS CNC grinding machine and the Loroch Evolution K850-M.

The latter is designed for the production of metal-cutting saw blades. Incorporating a 19” touchscreen CNC, the K850-M enables blades to be programmed in minutes with data input directly at the machine via the colour display. Suitable for processing HSS saws, solid-carbide saws and friction saw blades, the Loroch Evolution K850-M has a direct-drive grinding wheel configuration that reduces power loss and eliminates undesirable vibration that can impact blade quality.
For further information www.vollmer-group.com

The headline phrase is not commonly associated with mechanically engineered parts, but it sums up how one company owner views his production facility.

Werner Buschor owns Buschor Praezisionsmechanik AG, a medium-sized subcontract manufacturer in Switzerland, where he had two growing problems. The first was the increasingly tight nature of customer tolerances, prompting a reliance on operators to ‘tweak’ programs and tooling to achieve the desired results. His second issue was delivery times becoming shorter, causing him to look at unmanned production in the evenings and at weekends.
When trying to find answers to his accuracy problem Buschor found Kern Microtechnik and soon realised that the Kern Micro milling machine was also able to solve his second problem of working unmanned.
“The Kern Micro is the first milling centre that can stand up to our measuring machine,” he says. “The measuring machine has a measurement uncertainty of half a thousandth of a millimeter,
while the Kern Micro offers a positioning accuracy of half a thousandth of a millimetre. Our first Kern Micro was immediately connected to a System 3R automation system, with the possibility of adding another machine. The large tool magazine with 186 tools and the repeatability of the Kern Micro are ideal for automatic production.”
Key to repeatability is the thermal stability of the machine, with its smart cooling management system that ensures the temperature of structural components remains constant with a maximum deviation of 0.2ºC.
To improve matters even more, a second Kern Micro has been installed and connected to the workpiece changer. Kern is represented in the UK by Rainford Precision.
For further information https://rainfordprecision.com/