While at IMTS this year I set out to find the latest and greatest. I was looking for the out-of-the-box solutions to age old challenges. Well I found one: A new company called Autonetics. This company is a factory rep for Kawasaki robots, but that is not the out-of-the-box part.

I want to talk to you today about another opportunity in the VMC world. The fantastic marriage of machine tool technology and an Open Architecture Control by two staples of the machine tool industry. The New Bridgeport GX1000-OSP by Hardinge which contains the Okuma's OSP200M Control has been released in the U.S. Market.

In today's ever-growing market of technology and plethora of ads selling you the latest and greatest, how do you decide what direction to take? No one ever wants to make the wrong decision for your company, so researching a software or hardware solution is a very important step, but doing your due diligence can be time consuming and sometimes expensive. I am not here to sell you anything, but to give you information and facts that I found to be quite amazing.

A few months ago I had the occasion to be visiting with a manufacturing engineer and sat in presentation about a boring bar that could be remotely adjusted, electronically. At the time it seemed a bit hard to believe. Recently; at IMTS, I was asked to investigate this further.

Someone tell me what the world is coming to. IMTS is the International MACHINE Tool Show. RIGHT? So why were there so many booths of software suppliers? You can't talk to them about ballscrew, encoders, and coolant tanks.