ANCA CNC Machines, a global leader in CNC grinding technology, is excited to announce the opening of #ANCATooloftheYear2025. This prestigious competition invites toolmakers from around the world to showcase their outstanding designs, precision and craftsmanship. Participants will compete for an array of prizes, including AUD$10,000 in ANCA products, a trip to ANCA Australia or Thailand, an on-site consultation with ANCA experts and a 12-month ANCA Academy subscription for professional development.

Participants can enter one or both of the following categories: #MadeonANCA for physical tools created using ANCA technology, and Most Innovative Tool Design for virtual tools that showcase cutting-edge creativity.

The winner of #MadeonANCA receives:

• Option 1: AUD$10,000 in ANCA accessories/software + a trip to ANCA Australia or Thailand
• Option 2: An on-site consultation with an ANCA Application Engineer to optimise cycle times and boost productivity

The winner of Most Innovative Tool Design receives:

• A 12-month subscription to ANCA Academy, ANCA’s e-learning platform, for five people

“At ANCA we develop and continuously improve our machines and software. Our customers create incredible products through their skill and innovation in applying ANCA technology. We see #ANCATooloftheYear2025 and the Female Machinist Award as a spotlight on the trailblazers who are applying their knowledge to create something unique in the market. Having celebrated 50 years of innovation last year, we now look firmly ahead to a future driven by bold ideas, precision craftsmanship and talented individuals,” said Patrick Boland, ANCA Co-Founder.

Submissions are open from 26^th May to 31^st July. Winners will be announced at EMO 2025 in Hannover. Enter now at www.anca.com/Tool-of-the-Year

Female Machinist Award 2025: Celebrating women in manufacturing

ANCA’s Female Machinist Award returns in 2025, which recognises the outstanding achievements of women in the tool and cutter grinding industry. This award celebrates the growing role of women in manufacturing and their contribution to advancing the cutting tool industry.

Jennifer Baldus, Managing Director at Spreyer-Werkzeugtechnik GmbH in Limburg and member of the judging panel, said: “For 50 years, Spreyer has stood for precision and high performance in the tool industry. Our success has always been down to committed and talented people –  both men and women. Today, I experience this in my daily dialogue with customers: Women are more in demand in our industry than ever before. The ‘Female Machinist of the Year’ competition puts the spotlight on the outstanding achievements of female precision tool grinders, creates important role models and encourages young talents to make their way in this demanding and fascinating profession.”

Women of all skill levels who are actively using ANCA technology in their work are encouraged to apply. Submissions will be evaluated based on exceptional problem-solving skills to overcome challenges, innovative and effective tool design, and the demonstrated ability to think critically and develop innovative solutions.

The winner of the Female Machinist Award receives:

• A fully funded ticket to attend a major trade show where ANCA is exhibiting
• Exclusive access to ANCA’s leadership, engineers and product experts
• Networking opportunities with industry professionals and access to educational seminars and workshops

In the Brother Group Vision “At your side 2030” for FY2030, Brother has positioned the industrial area as a focus area, and the first three-year plan, CS B2024 (FY2022-2024), aims for significant growth in the industrial equipment business handling machine tools.

India currently has a population of over 1.4 billion people, and the population and economy are expected to continually grow with a large market growth potential primarily for automobiles and motorcycles. In March 2022, BROTHER MACHINERY INDIA PRIVATE LTD., in Bengaluru to provide after-sales service, technical support, and marketing to this growing market. Production capability will be added to BROTHER MACHINERY INDIA PRIVATE LTD., and a new plant will be built at the Japan Industrial Township (JIT) in the Tumakuru district, about 1.5 hours by car from BROTHER MACHINERY INDIA PRIVATE LTD.

Machine tools are currently produced at the Kariya Plant in Japan and BROTHER MACHINERY XIAN CO., LTD. in China, but by producing machine tools in India, Brother will build a system that can deliver to Indian customers in short amounts of time.

The new plant is scheduled for completion in September 2024, with production planned to begin in December of the same year. In addition, solar panels will be installed on the roof as an initiative to reduce CO2 emissions. Part of the electricity required to operate the plant will be covered by renewable energy, and CO2 emissions are planned to be reduced by approximately 600 tons annually.

According to Mitsui Seiki USA, one of the leading builders of jig borers, the market demand for these ultra-precise machines is on the rise. “Jig borers typically last 25 to 30 years,” said Mitsui Seiki USA’s Bill Malanche, COO. “Now seems to be the time that people are retiring their legacy machines and looking to buy new.” Mitsui Seiki’s newest line, the J12/J/16 jig borer series, combines large capacity and high precision to meet the increasing need for accuracy for machining workpieces such as molds and castings. The machines offer Y-axis stroke of either 1,250 mm or 1,600 mm, with standard table sizes of 2,400 mm x 1,250 mm or 2,900 mm x 1,600 mm.

The machines’ strong and durable structures provide table lateral movement accuracy of 2.5 µm or better. The Z-axis guide system is restrained on four sides to maximize rigidity and reliability, and dual ball screws ensure stable feed motion.

For precision holemaking applications, XY interpolation enables the J12/J16 machines to carry out high-precision contouring by utilizing an end mill instead of a boring tool, eliminating the need to manually adjust a boring tool to accurately finish the hole diameter avoiding bottlenecks. Pitch accuracy is within 5 µm even for large-pitch holes.

The machines feature a 12,000 rpm 50 taper spindle and automatic toolchange capacity of 60 tools.

Additional options such as quill spindle, increased work capacity, as well as automation features are available to meet the customers’ needs.

“Machines in Mitsui Seiki’s J12/J/16 jig borer series are engineered to process a large range of part sizes with unceasing repeatability,” said Malanche. “They provide the durability, accuracy and flexibility required in today’s highly-competitive manufacturing environment.”

Within the past few years the number of Fastems’ CNC automation solutions utilizing automated guided vehicles (AGV) or autonomous mobile robots (AMR) has multiplied, and the demand keeps rising. Most typical AGV applications include material intralogistics, delivering tools to machines, and moving machining pallets between production process phases. The common goal of all
the AGV projects is timely, safe, and economical transfers of production items and Fastems is actively developing ways to utilize these technologies efficiently with CNC automation.

“Today, the majority of our customer industries are using AGVs or AMRs in some way. Whether in aerospace, defense, machine building, medical or subcontracting, there are automated vehicles in many production shops”, said Mika Laitinen, Solution Sales Director at Fastems. “When it comes to CNC automation and AGVs or AMRs, they can be of great help in reducing manual transfers and forklift operations, reducing buffer sizes, increasing the automation level, and making production flow more predictable and reproducible.”

Fastems’ Manufacturing Management Software (MMS) brings higher intelligence for AGV use by overseeing all production orders and resources and scheduling every piece of this complex puzzle for timely customer deliveries. In practice, MMS schedules production based on customer orders and available production resources such as machine tools, cutting tools and raw materials then prompts the AGV’s fleet management software to perform the right transfers at the right time.

“We can ensure that all the AGV transfers are done just-in-time,” says Laitinen. “The benefits include reduced buffer storage sizes between process phases, and employees being able to prepare the right production resources in advance to reduce machine waiting times. And, when the unexpected happens

such as a tool goes missing, an urgent customer order comes in, or a machine breaks, MMS adjusts the production – including the AGV movement – so that the most urgent jobs still get done in time and all the needed resources are in place when needed.”

NUM AG has opened a branch in Bangalore in November 2019. With this expansion in Asia, the international company with headquarters in Teufen, Switzerland, further reinforces its position as a technology leader in the field of CNC controls. With the expansion to India, NUM increases its local presence there as well as its customer-oriented sales and service offering.

“The location in Bangalore will enable us to respond much more quickly to customer enquiries and further expand our brand in the region. We have been well represented in China and Taiwan for many years and would now like to further strengthen our position in Asia,” says Rajesh Nath, Managing Director of NUM India. This latest expansion secures jobs worldwide, as well as creating new employment opportunities in India.

Rajesh Nath and NUM CEO Peter von Rüti set up the branch in the south of Bangalore. The offices are located in a modern office complex in the business area of Jayaprakash Narayan Nagara district. “By opening a branch in India, we are exploiting our growth potential. At the same time, the Indian team is expanding our expertise in sales, service and after-sales support,” adds von Rüti. NUM believes that Bangalore, as a high-tech location, will strongly influence the CNC market in the future and thus significantly promote the development potential for CNC controls.

With the new office in Bangalore, NUM is now represented internationally at twelve locations.

• Provides virtual model of physical machine mechatronics
• Significantly reduces machine development time and cost by allowing design analysis, testing and performance enhancement to take place before construction

CNC specialist NUM has launched digital twin technology that enables machine tool manufacturers to reduce their time to market dramatically, by using powerful Industry 4.0 simulation techniques.CNC specialist NUM has launched digital twin technology that enables machine tool manufacturers to reduce their time to market dramatically, by using powerful Industry 4.0 simulation techniques.

Originally known as pairing technology, and first used by NASA in the early days of space exploration, digital twin technology is now rapidly gaining industry acceptance as one of the most cost-effective means of accelerating the development of products, processes and services.

For automation products such as machine tools, a digital twin is a virtual model that uses simulation, real-time data acquisition/analysis and machine learning techniques to allow full evaluation of a machine’s dynamic performance before constructing a physical prototype. The same technology can also be employed for customer presentations, virtual commissioning and operator training purposes – and all well before the actual machine itself has even been built.

NUM offers two versions of digital twin technology, to best suit customers’ needs. Both versions are designed for use with NUM’s powerful, open-architecture Flexium+ CNC platform. One version uses a naked Flexium+ controller and resident virtualisation software running on the system’s industrial PC to simulate the twinned machine automation. The other version uses the actual Flexium+ controller that will eventually be incorporated in the machine, linked via EtherCAT to a standalone PC running specialist high speed hardware simulation software to represent the mechatronics of the twinned machine.

The virtual controller version includes a software development kit for creating the software model of the machine. The model is a standalone PLC program that uses predefined components to simulate individual machine elements, such as sensors, spindles, pneumatic cylinders, etc. It is loaded into the integrated PLC of the Flexium+ controller. The Flexium NCK in the controller executes the NC programs and simulates the changing position values of the machine’s axes. To help users visualise the process, NUM’s package includes the CODESYS Depictor software tool produced by CODESYS GmbH, which is used to produce 3D visualisations from the IEC 61131-3 code created by the simulation.

The other version of NUM’s digital twin technology package accommodates real-time data acquisition and analysis. It is based on the ISG-Virtuous hardware simulation software produced by Industrielle Steuerungstechnik GmbH (ISG). The Flexium+ controller that is intended to be used in the physical machine is connected via an EtherCAT network to a standard PC, and interacts with the simulation software in real-time. The PC acts as the twinned virtual machine – with all simulated, virtual components behaving like real components in terms of their interfaces, parameters and operating modes – to accurately replicate the structure and dynamic performance of the real machine. The movements of the machine are displayed realistically on the PC, using the supplied 3D simulation software.

NUM’s new digital twin technology provides machine tool manufacturers with a very powerful and cost-effective means of reducing their developments costs and accelerating their time to market. The virtual controller version is especially useful for the early development stage of a project, before the CNC system has been finalised, while the real-time hardware simulation version has the advantage that all sequencing (PLC) and motion control (CNC) programs that are created during development can simply be transferred to the real machine as soon as it becomes available.

The high-technology company TRUMPF plans to strengthen its additive manufacturing (AM) division: The Ditzingen-based company is in advanced talks with its Italian partner SISMA S.p.A., a leader of manufacturing high-technology machines, to acquire the joint venture TRUMPF SISMA S.R.L. completely. Up to now, TRUMPF holds 55 percent of the shares.

In addition, TRUMPF intends to continue SISMA’s additive manufacturing business activities in the industrial, dental and medical sectors.

Simultaneously with its divestment from the joint venture, SISMA plans to focus on the jewelry and fashion industry and for this purpose to enter into a cooperation with TRUMPF in 3D printing.
TRUMPF SISMA was founded as a joint venture in 2014 and is based in Schio in northern Italy. Around 60 employees work there in the development and production of metal 3D printing machines with Laser Metal Fusion technology.

The transaction is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2021. The two companies did not provide further details.

• Neural network technology learns optimum machine behaviour
• Powerful monitoring, fault prediction and diagnostic capabilities help maintain production standards and minimise machine downtime

NUM has launched innovative artificial intelligence software that provides CNC machine tool users with highly cost-effective condition monitoring capabilities.

Compatible with all of NUM’s latest-generation Flexium+ CNC systems, the NUMai software package is a complete, fully integrated solution for CNC machine tools – it does not require any additional sensors, and runs on the same industrial PC as the CNC system’s HMI (human-machine interface).

NUMai software can be utilised as soon as a machine tool has been commissioned and is ready to start production, or on a machine that is already being employed for production purposes. The software initially acquires all pertinent operating data over a period of time, typically a number of hours, while the machine is being used for normal production tasks. Ideally, a diversity of part programs is run, involving a variety of different machining conditions, in order to ensure that the data is as comprehensive and reliable as possible.

The collected data is used to teach a neural network so that any deviation from the ‘good’ machine behaviour and performance can then be detected and predicted; a suitable PC program for subsequent online performance monitoring and diagnostic purposes is generated automatically.

During the software’s development, NUM beta tested the technology on a CNC milling machine equipped with three axes and a spindle, which required a neural network comprising 36 neurons with three hidden layers. In this particular instance, 396 parameters needed their values to be accurately defined; this required the acquisition of more than 2 million ‘known good’ data points and 300 iterations of the teaching phase, which took about four hours per axis.

NUMai condition monitoring software capitalises on the inherent flexibility of NUM’s latest-generation Flexium+ CNC platform. As standard, every Flexium+ CNC system includes a PC which can handle data from the servo drives’ measurement points, a PLC that has direct access to machine parameters, and an NCK oscilloscope feature capable of reading values in real-time. All system communications are handled by FXServer, using fast real-time Ethernet (RTE) networking.

During everyday use in the production environment, NUMai software runs in the background on the industrial PC that forms part of the machine tool’s CNC system, continuously monitoring and evaluating the machine’s performance. Any discrepancy or deviation beyond user-defined thresholds is notified to the PLC, which decides what action should be taken – from a simple advisory message to an emergency disengagement.

The new NUMai condition monitoring software option can be installed and used on any Flexium+ CNC system running NUM’s Flexium software version 4.1.10.10 or higher.

Doosan Machine Tools has recently launched the VX series of vertical machining centers designed for graphite and ceramic processing. The lineup consists of the VX 6500G, which is optimized for graphite processing, and the VX 6500C, which is optimized for ceramic processing. Equipped with a dual-column structure, the series provides unrivaled processing performance. High-precision processing has been enhanced with the adoption as standard features of a newly developed low-noise, high-precision spindle and a range of peripheral devices in order to deliver the highest level of performance in graphite and ceramic processing.

Designed to Optimize the High-Precision Dual-Column Mechanical StructureEquipped with a stable, symmetrical, dual-column mechanical structure optimized for high-speed feed and high-precision processing, the VX 6500G (graphic) and the VX 6500C (ceramic) boast a travel distance (X/Y/Z) of 1050/650/550mm and a rapid traverse speed (X/Y/Z) of 30/30/30mm, guaranteeing the optimal processing of graphite/ceramic shapes requiring rigidity, high-speed and high-precision.

Low-noise & Low-vibration SpindleThanks to the adoption of a newly developed low-noise, low-vibration spindle, the series has a maximum direct drive spindle speed of 12000 r/min {Option: built-in type 20000, 30000 r/min}, spindle motor output of 18.5 /11kW, and spindle motor torque of 117.8 Nm. Reduced vibration during cutting extends tool life, improves surface roughness, and increases the rigidity required to sustain high-precision performance.

Optimization Package Customized for Machining Characteristics The series is also equipped with a range of thermal displacement reduction functions – including a ball screw cover, LM guide double wiper, and grease lubrication system – as standard features to deliver performance and convenience optimized for the characteristics of graphite and ceramic processing. Notably, the VX 6500G is equipped with a graphite dust collection system as a standard feature to prevent graphite powder from accumulating in the cabin, while the VX 6500C can process chips efficiently with the addition of a ceramic filter system as an optional feature.

Hurco Takumi Open House 2022 sets a new benchmark in industry partnerships. More than 300 delegates registered and visited the two-day machining event held at Hurco India Technology Centre at Chinchwad, Pune. Hurco India along with its 11 partners successfully organized HURCO TAKUMI Open House 2022, with a focus on making the latest machining technologies and processes affordable and adaptable for Indian manufacturers.

HURCO TAKUMI Open House 2022 held on March 15-16 ended with spectacular achievement for Hurco India as well as for Accutech, Blaser Swisslube, Blum Novotest, Haimer India, Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence, REGO-FIX, Renishaw India, Sarda Magnets, SolidCam India, ZECHA, and Machine Maker.
The opening session of the Open House was graced by the presence of guests of honours Mr. O P Singh from OM Galaxy, Mumbai, Mr. Malkit Singh from Panesar Agriculture, Ludhiana, the first customer of Hurco in India and Mr. D Subramanian from ChennaiCNC, another major user of Hurco machines. “We are delighted with the excellent response we received during Open House. With our partners, our aim of making the machining technology affordable and adaptable, led to the success of the event with an appreciable number of delegates turning out from the Pune as well as otherregions”, said Mr. Sanjib Chakraborty, Managing Director, Hurco India.

Five Machines were under live display at the Open House. Hurco’s range of machines included VM 20i Machine, VMX 42i with 5 axis simultaneous application and TMM10i High-performance Turn-mill Center. There were Takumi’s Vertical Machining Center model PV1052 and H12E on Live Demonstration of high precision die mould components.

REGO-FIX brought the pioneering powRgrip solution in the event, RENISHAW demonstrated NC4+ Blue High Accuracy Laser Technology, along with Equator and Primo Probe, and ZECHA displayed its cutting-edge PEACOCK and IGUANA cutting tools to achieve high precision machining. Accutech Tools & Solutions showcased theLMT Cutting Tools with the Callington Metak Working Fluids at the event. HAIMER India displayed its Microset Tool Presetting System, and Sarda Magnets displayed MagnaSlot 50 work-holding solutions, SolidCam India its iMachining, Blaser Swisslube their Liquid Tool, Blum Novotest their latest probes, and tool setters, Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence it’s EspiritCAM and WORKNC during the two-day event.

During the opening ceremony, Machine Maker launched its special print edition which was unveiled by Mr. Sanjib Chakraborty, Managing Director, Hurco India and Mr. Joseph Braun, Global Vice President, Hurco Companies Inc, which was further distributed to the delegates of the event. The registered participants were also shared digital copies of the special edition, where a special section on the open house was featured. The open house created huge interest among the industry players and several companies shared their willingness to partner with Hurco. Keeping the event focused on Metal Cutting and Die & Mould solutions, and due consideration regarding the space and focus the 11 industry partners were selected.

The open house was attended by Mr. Joseph Braun, Senior Vice President – Global Brand Manager, and Head of Asia operations, Hurco Companies, Inc the event brought about international exposure to India’s machine Tool innovation. “We are confidentthat the global expertise of Joseph would not only help in acquiring a strong customer base but also help Hurco’s global R&D team to come up with more competitive solutions for the Indian Machine Tool Market in the future,” said Sanjib.Concluding the event Sanjib Chakraborty, Managing Director, Hurco India said, “With the encouraging response, we aim to organize many such events across India with industry partners.” He requested all industry partners to share information and leads, and take this collaboration to a more constructive level.