Taking place on 11-12 June, the Modern Shipbuilding Summit 2019, organised by Pemamek, was aimed at shipbuilders looking to modernise their existing production or planning to invest in a new shipyard.

In total, the event in Finland was attended by over 130 maritime influencers from 56 companies in 20 countries. The event included presentations from major shipyards such as MV Werften (Germany) and Ingalls Shipbuilding (USA), as well as welding, cutting and production technology providers like Pemamek, Lincoln Electric, Davi, HGG, Hexagon and Microstep.
For further information https://pemamek.com/

Ballydehob, Ireland-based Ceramicx, a designer and manufacturer of ceramic infrared heating elements and ovens for industrial and commercial applications, has installed an Excetek wire EDM and EDM hole drill from Warwick Machine Tools. The machines are being used to support the company’s tool-room operations.

Under the auspices of founder Frank Wilson, Ceramicx has gone from strength-to-strength. Around 99% of business comes from exporting its products to over 80 countries, including Germany, UK, USA, Russia, Turkey, India and China. During the past decade Ceramicx has been enjoying average annual growth levels of circa 15%.
In 2017, the company reached a new milestone with the completion of a major building expansion project. The extra space included a well-equipped tool room to provide day-to-day support for the ceramic mouldings required by the company.
“We produce the tooling needed for compacting ceramic powder to generate the various heat insulation and control parts required for our products, so a fully capable and self-sufficient tool room was a pragmatic decision,” says Wilson. “Some of my team visited the MACH 2018 exhibition and subsequently visited Warwick Machine Tools’ showroom in the Midlands.
“A demonstration of the compact Excetek V350 CNC wire EDM machine and the HD30Z EDM hole drilling machine provided my team with the confidence to recommend the investment required,” he adds.
In use, the Excetek EDM machines have proven reliable and robust. However, as Wilson points out, “while the machines are easy to use and maintain, it’s reassuring to know that we have support here in Ireland. Our remote location makes this a key consideration, along with the trust we have in Paul Barry, WMT’s local sales and service engineer.”
For further information www.warwickmachinetools.co.uk

Cutting-tool specialist Mitsubishi Materials has opened its MTEC (Mitsubishi Technology and Education Centre) near Stuttgart, Germany.

The facility represents significant investment for the present and future needs of Mitsubishi’s development towards providing customers with turnkey metal-cutting solutions. MTEC houses the latest turning and milling machines, including a five-axis machining centre. Further equipment includes advanced coordinate measuring and inspection devices, together with the latest in tool-setting technology. Yutaka Tanaka, president of MMC Hardmetal Europe (Holdings) GmbH, says: “It is our expectation that this new facility will become respected for providing closer, direct engineering contact with our customers.”
For further information www.mmc-hardmetal.com

The second VDW (German Machine Tool Builders’ Association) symposium in Vietnam sought to tap into the country’s recent economic acceleration.

Machine-tool consumption, an important indicator of the industry’s modernisation efforts, is forecast to grow by 8.2% in 2019. A total of 11 machine-tool manufacturers – including Alzmetall, Chiron, Gleason, Grob, Heller, Index, Kapp Niles, Röders, Siemens, Trumpf and Weisser – presented their latest innovations to around 100 representatives from Vietnamese industry.
Since 2014, German machine-tool exports to Vietnam have risen by more than 150%, with a 215% increase in 2018 alone. Indeed, orders from Vietnam have more than tripled recently. The German machine-tool industry offers technologically advanced solutions that stand out from the mass-produced offerings of Asian competitors, which was confirmed by Duong Tuan Ngoc, vice general director at Hong KY Ltd of Ho Chi Minh City: “We’ve already purchased machine tools from Switzerland this year. However, in the future, we’ll be taking a keen interest in high-precision milling machines from Germany.”
For further information www.vdw.de

For those looking to reduce or prevent vibrations that occur during machining, Mapal has developed a special damping system that is located in the main shank of the tool.

The system is said to provide advantages such as improved surface finish, better accuracy, reduced machining noise and extended tool life.
Cutting tools for boring and milling with very long projection lengths tend to vibrate due to insufficient dynamic rigidity. When designing new tool-holding systems, Mapal product developers took into account all factors arising from the interaction of the machine tool, the cutting tool, the type of clamping and the part. The result is a system for vibration damping that is matched to the stiffness of all common machine types, and can be used for cutting different types of materials with a variety of tools.
Mapal’s self-contained system of auxiliary mass and several steel spring packages, counteracts and minimises tool-body deflection. Vibration in the system can be up to 1,000 times lower compared with tools that are not supported by the absorber system, which helps to improve surface finish. When milling case hardened steel (16MnCr5) with a 250 mm long combination of arbor and cutter with ISO indexable inserts (50 mm diameter) featuring five edges, the Rz value was halved from 7.8 to 3.9 µm (3 mm depth of cut) compared with the same tool system minus vibration damping.
Mill arbors with vibration damping in the shank are available from Mapal with internal coolant supply for clamping diameters of 16, 22 and 27 mm, with a length of 200 or 300 mm. At present, these tool-holding adaptors are available for SK40, SK50, HSK-A63 and HSK-A100 connections.
For further information www.mapal.com