Blog

There is a refreshing sense of optimism and enthusiasm for the new year permeating the manufacturing industry, in particular among job shops. While a number of projects were put on hold in 2024, many are now back in these shops’ production plans for 2025 mainly because of pro-growth and pro-manufacturing policies expected to materialize in the new year.

According to Dan Janka, President of Mazak Corporation, IMTS 2024 exceeded expectations despite economic headwinds. He elaborated saying that manufacturers of all sizes, representing all vertical industries, came to Chicago ready to discover new technology and manufacturing solutions that would enable greater productivity, automation and profitability, and the show did not disappoint.

Mazak will be front and center in booth #338300 at IMTS 2024, which will take place September 9-14, 2024, at McCormick Place in Chicago. Visitors to the Mazak booth can explore four Action Areas, all of which will showcase our ongoing commitment to continuous machining innovation, automation and digital solutions.

An extremely wise man once said that a machine tool company has to be close to the markets it serves to gain a complete understanding of the manufacturing culture and to support the industry in the best possible way. That man was the late Teruyuki (Terry) Yamazaki, President of Yamazaki Mazak Corporation. He recognized the need to integrate Mazak into the United States and chose Florence, Kentucky, for the company’s North American manufacturing headquarters 50 years ago.

For many shops, the reason they forego using the machine tool OEM and instead go with an outside service provider for spindle repairs is often price. While these shops hope to save money, they run the risk of spindle repairs that are okay but, in reality, can actually hinder machines tools from performing at their highest levels. When opting for an outside repair service provider, the risk often far outweighs the cost savings.

When it comes to service and support from third-party suppliers, the phrase “jack of all trades and master of none” sums up the situation in some instances. While many third-party machine service and repair companies are quite capable, they typically work on a myriad of machine types and brands and aren’t always as well versed on the nuances of a particular model/brand as are the machine’s OEM.

In 2024, economic factors will continue to challenge manufacturers. The manufacturing sector will continue to experience a mild recession as the consumer-driven part of the economy quickly slows. With 10,000 baby boomer generation employees predicted to leave the workforce per day, according to a report by ITR Economics, the labor shortage will also persist in the coming year. On top of all this, wage rates will climb along with interest rates and energy costs.

Over 2,000 visitors from 46 U.S. states and seven countries joined us for DISCOVER 2023 – and the largest privately held manufacturing event in North America held excitement in store for every attendee. Our latest innovations demonstrated technologies to suit shops of all sizes and workflows of all types. Along with 29 Mazak machine tools to build success, we hosted a long list of speakers with insights and advice gleaned from industry expertise. The entire show – including the ever-popular family day – made Mazak the place to be from October 9-13, 2023.

Mazak’s Kentucky-built SYNCREX Series – the company’s entry into the Swiss-style turning machine market – provides shops a feature-rich machine platform that meets the growing demand for both low-mix/high-volume production and high-mix/low-volume production. While they are especially adept at machining complex, unconventional parts, the machines in the series can also run any part that could be turned on a standard lathe.

Whether or not shops want to admit it, automation is the path forward for manufacturing. As skilled labor shortages continue to plague our industry and consumer demand surges, automation is necessary to increase the output of existing workforces and expanding production capacity to meet customer needs. Additionally , automation ensures process consistency, improves quality, can enhance safety, helps lower overall costs and reduces the risk of scrap.

The establishment of NextGen cars in the NASCAR Cup Series has had a profound impact at Team Penske. As a result of the rules and requirements surrounding those cars, the team went from building all of its own cars on site and manufacturing the majority of the components for those cars to basically purchasing off-the-shelf cars.

In manufacturing, there are instances when the simplicity of conversational-type part programming applies, and then there are those applications when EIA/ISO G-code programming is a must. Aerospace and medical machining programs, for instance, often require incremental control and documentation of tool movement, and automotive production programs must be free of all time-consuming machine motion where fractions of seconds become critical when producing hundreds of thousands of parts.