Supply chain resilience has been a thread weaved throughout the manufacturing industry in 2022. To combat ongoing uncertainties across the ASEAN region, more firms are turning towards India for resilience. In fact, we’re seeing an increasing dependance on the nation to help deliver in areas others still face challenges. There are several trends that demonstrate India’s fortitude during the year as Sunil Joshi, President of Sales for Sandvik Coromant India explains.

It’s been a turbulent year in many respects. Across the globe, energy costs have increased by between 25% and 90% and, in extreme instances, by as much as 300% over the last year. The ongoing logistics disruptions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic continue to impact businesses, creating a ripple effect across global supply chains.

Furthermore, manufacturers are also faced with something of a sustainability paradox. One the one hand, there’s pressure to deliver products at higher speeds and at lower costs. On the other, they’re facing growing scrutiny from investors, partners and local governments to adopt more sustainable ways of working.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Despite encountering challenges that could easily throw the industry’s resilience into question, many manufacturers will enter 2023 having weathered the storm. In particular, we’re seeing India shape up to become an ASEAN supply chain hub. With a concerted effort from the Indian government to deliver better transport infrastructure, the country now has the world’s second largest road and rail network. Furthermore, recent developments attest to the growing confidence in India as a manufacturing hub, such as Apple’s decision to manufacture its iPhone 14 in India.

With these challenges and potential in mind, let’s take a look at some of the trends impacting the metal cutting sector this year and beyond.

Getting lighter

Two years into the 2020s and the decade looks set to mark the beginning of a new shift in manufacturing — away from pure profit maximisation and towards a growth approach that incorporates the health of the planet at its core.

Today, manufacturers find themselves having to meet the sustainability needs of a variety of stakeholders. Public awareness of how industry can damage the environment has put emphasis on businesses to change their ways, as they can now be held accountable more easily. In fact, there’s a rising number of consumers who will pay a premium for eco versions of a product, YouGov reports. Having strong sustainability credentials can also make a business more attractive to suppliers and shareholders who have their own sustainability objectives to meet.

One way of satisfying the need for more sustainable products is to make them using lighter materials. If we take the aerospace industry as an example, pressure to lower air travel’s carbon footprint has placed an emphasis on making planes lighter, in order to save on fuel. Shedding weight will help bring down the high fuel consumption of planes. For instance, when United Airlines switched its in-flight magazine to lighter paper, it saved over 170,000 gallons of fuel a year. Every gram counts when making aircraft lighter, from large components such as the wing box, to intricate motors in reclining passenger seats.

Advances in materials have led to a variety of possibilities for aerospace companies. This has been seen through the increased use of composites and graphene, and also lightweight materials such as titanium. Other innovations in materials technology include the use of metal powers and additive manufacturing technologies to design lightweight and more sustainable metal parts.

Titanium is 30% stronger than steel, but nearly 50% lighter — making it a key component in addressing efficiency and sustainability challenges. However, machining materials such as titanium presents its own challenges. Titanium alloys can have double the hardness of steel alloys so, when paired with titanium’s low thermal conductivity, high thermal and mechanical loads are placed onto the tools tasked with cutting the metal. Manufacturers embracing the trend for lighter, yet more challenging, materials must therefore ensure they have access to the right cutting tools.

Elsewhere automotive manufacturing is also undergoing a lightweight revolution. Here, we’re seeing manufacturers turn to aluminium to save weight and make vehicles more sustainable. But aluminum alloys require complex machining with complex and cost-intensive processes and various tools. In addition to very time-consuming tool setups, inferior surface finishes, burr formation and inconsistent tool wear are not uncommon and manufacturers must lean on the right tools to efficiently machine the material.

A connected machine shop

Since, and as a result of, the pandemic, we’ve seen manufacturers across the globe adopt digital technologies at an unprecedented speed. Findings suggest the speed of digital transformation has hastened by several years — as many as seven according to McKinsey.

In India, strides towards digitalisation are being seen as Debjani Ghosh, President of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) reveals in NASSCOM and Capgemini’s India Industry Adoption: A Case to Mature Manufacturing Digitalization by 2025 report. In the report, he says: “Industry 4.0 has reached a tipping point in Indian manufacturing […]. Moving forward, it will be fascinating to watch how ready the Indian manufacturing industry is to adopt and scale Industry 4.0, which is largely determined by the use cases selected, the capacity to scale proofs of concept, and the alignment of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) capabilities.” The report also found that Indian manufacturers spent between $5.5 and $6.5 billion dollars on Industry 4.0 technologies in 2021, with half that being spent on Cloud and IoT.

Achieving digitalisation at scale requires a multitude of disciplines to come together — namely machining knowledge, OT and IT as well as more specific technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and big data. Uniting all these areas into a single strategy gives manufacturers the resilience to adapt to change, streamline operations and futureproof themselves.

As companies seek to broaden their capabilities and digitalise, we’re seeing equipment providers and IT companies combine their niches to create a whole new level of value for their customers. This is a key part of Sandvik Coromant’s digital strategy, and will be for years to come. If we think of Sandvik Coromant’s niche, machining and metal cutting, our expertise lies in increasing the efficiency, reliability and repeatability of our customers’ machining operations. If we then look at a company like Microsoft and its Azure cloud computing platform, its niche is very different, but plays an important part in helping our own software solutions to deliver value.

When we combine niches from Sandvik Coromant and Microsoft, we create a specialism that brings a deeper understanding of digital services to the manufacturing space. The CoroPlus®  portfolio of solutions from Sandvik Coromant leverages our unique machining knowledge and integrates all elements of the production flow — people, machines, tools and data — to empower customers to make better business decisions. The solution combines the company’s deep experience in machining with digital solutions from partners such as Microsoft for an enriched portfolio that delivers efficient processes, planning and operations.

It’s a win-win model for both partners, and is how we foresee the manufacturing landscape continuing to flourish in the future. And we’re not stopping there. Moving into 2023, Sandvik Coromant’s mission will continue to revolve around shaping the future of manufacturing through digitalization. Other collaborations, such as Sandvik Coromant’s partnership with CGTech, the developers of simulation software Vericut, are also helping us to create digital synergies that will benefit the entire manufacturing value chain.

This year has certainly proved testing for manufacturers’ resilience. However, despite having storms to weather, several trends are helping to shape the present and future of the industry. We’re already seeing strides towards sustainability and growing investment in digital services, both of which will pave the way for a greener, leaner industry.

Machine builder Fives Cincinnati finds Kennametal’s KM4X spindle connection key to achieving new levels of metal removal on industry-leading “super-profilers”

What does production superiority mean to aircraft manufacturers? In a word: billions. In the land of the giants, US-based Boeing beat European rival Airbus in net new orders and deliveries in the first quarter of 2015. While the first quarter is the traditionally slow quarter for new orders, it’s deliveries that generate the most revenue, and Boeing handed over a record number of jets for the period. For manufacturers of all sizes and types of aircraft, and their entire supply chain of components and parts suppliers working in difficult-to-machine materials, production delays can mean order cancellations, and cancellations can mean shifts to better-equipped builders.

One technology provider that knows this better than most is Fives Cincinnati, whose Hebron, KY, plant produces Cincinnati machining centers, composites fiber-placement systems, and multi-spindle Cincinnati profilers. With over 650 profilers in the field all over the world, there isn’t a commercial aircraft flying that hasn’t been touched by a Cincinnati profiler, the company says.

Available in three- and five-spindle gantry configurations, the latest-generation of these powerful giants, the Cincinnati XTi Profiler, is impressive on many scales. Designed for manufacturers that process multiple materials, 7000-rpm spindles can cut aluminum and steel and high-torque (2523 Nm) spindles are available for processing titanium and other hard alloys. Called ‘the only multi-spindle platform available for titanium roughing,” company literature states the XT sets the MRR (metal-removal rate) record for machining titanium at more than 100 cubic inches per minute. These massive machines, with 4267 mm of X-axis travel (expandable in increments of 3658 mm), 3683 mm in Y, and 711 mm in Z, now are setting new records with optional KM4X100 spindle connections from Kennametal Inc.

From Weakest Link to Strongest Feature
Whether profiling on large gantry machines or milling on smaller machining centers, processing tough material like titanium is a constant challenge. Machining hard alloys while adding the pressure of improving production efficiencies means maximizing metal removal in the face of low cutting speeds and significant cutting forces. Machine tool builders like Fives have responded with specialty milling and profiling centers that feature improved stiffness and damping on spindles and sizable machine structures, all to minimize undesirable vibrations that deteriorate part quality, throughput, and tool life. Although these advances have added to greater productivity, the weakest point historically has been the spindle connection.

The tool-spindle connection, the “handshake” between the machine tool and the cutting tool, determines how much material the machine can remove on a given operation. This is because this interface must withstand high loads and yet maintain its rigidity until tool deflection is too high or the onset of chatter is reached. Spindles may be able to transmit a considerable amount of torque, but cutting forces also generate bending moments that will exceed the interface’s limits prior to reaching torque limits. This becomes obvious in end-milling applications, where projection lengths are typically greater — the limiting factor is the spindle interface’s bending capacity. As an example, an indexable helical cutter with 250mm (9.84 in.) projection from spindle face, 80mm (3.15 in.) in diameter generates 4620 Nm (3407.5 ft. lbs.) of bending moment and less than 900 Nm (663.8 ft. lbs.) of torque when removing 360 cm3/min of Ti6Al4V at RDOC of 12.7mm and an ADOC of 63.5mm.

By combining high clamping force and optimized interference levels, Kennametal’s next-generation spindle connection KM4X provides a robust connection, extremely high stiffness, and bending load capacity. For titanium processors, this means greatly improved performance in machining high-strength alloys and other materials, enabling extremely high metal removal rates and more completed parts per day.

Adds More to Machine Design
Together with Kennametal senior account manager Mike Malott, Fives Cincinnati applications engineer Robert Snodgrass began evaluating KM4X approximately four years ago. “The engineering is impressive – it definitely allowed us to start thinking that there’s more to machine design, that a stiffer spindle helps meet customer demand for more effective metal cutting and increased throughput.”

“Remember, typical aero structure components start out as forgings with much of the material being removed to achieve finished part specifications,” says Kennametal Vice President Mark Huston. “The “buy-to-fly” ratio — the weight you buy in raw material vs. the weight that flies in finished form can be 4:1, 8:1 or more depending on the component.”

First-generation Cincinnati profilers achieved an MRR of four cubic inches per minute in titanium, due to machine structure and tool-spindle connection limitations. With the XT-generation of Cincinnati profilers and face-contact HSK 125 spindle connections, the MRR increased to 50 cubic inches per minute. With the KM4X100, the MRR doubled to 100 cubic inches per minute.

“Even at a 100 cubic inches per minute, our benchmark testing for the XT profilers using the KM4X were well below the machine’s theoretical limits for bending moment resistance,” Snodgrass adds. He noted that previous-generation tests employed large CAT60-taper toolholders that, when compared to 50-taper versions are like driving a tank versus an SUV. The KM4X achieved double the metal removal rates versus the  60-taper toolholder. Compared to CAT50, HSK100, or KM4X100 the CAT60 is almost twice the weight.

“This changes spindle and machine design a ton,” says Ken Wichman, Fives Cincinnati product manager. “Many gantry machines have manual tool exchange even though automatic tool exchange/storage is available. The enhanced bending moment resistance of the KM4X allows lighter tooling when compared to a CAT or HSK tool with an equivalent bending moment resistance. Ergonomically, this is a huge benefit to the operator. For customer’s choosing automatic tool exchange/storage, the smaller KM4X can accommodate more tools in a given footprint.”

“We pride ourselves in keeping customers productive,” adds Fives Cincinnati Vice President Mark Logan. “Not only is a more powerful spindle connection like KM4X changing new machine design, it also can be a significant boost for existing machines in the field. This gives us the chance to offer a notable upgrade in retrofits while still pushing the limits on profiler models to come.”

“The industry needs to set new standards for producing titanium parts at the lowest cost per piece, and the XT Profiler provides that capability and more,” says Chip Storie, Fives Cincinnati executive vice president. “With a massive cross-rail, robust spindle design, dedicated foundation, and high-pressure coolant system, we expect to exceed 100 cubic inches per minute metal removal. This is going to change the way the industry approaches titanium machining.”

SIDEBAR: Analyzing the Bobsled Cut
Mike Malott, Kennametal senior account manager, has spent years in the field to where he had been granted “family” status on the Fives Cincinnati production floor. He also has noticed that the FIVES “bobsled cut” for establishing cutting-tool performance has been making its way around the industry.

“To truly put a new configuration through its paces, we had to develop an extremely challenging test – truly something for which the tool was not intended,” says application engineer Robert Snodgrass.

The result was forcing a tool through a titanium workpiece following a deep and continuous curve, similar to a bobsled track. “We wanted to max out penetrating depth and torque in a simultaneous-motion cut, all the time subjecting the machine tool and the spindle/cutting tool to extreme forces in every possible way.”

Experienced titianium processors may wince thinking of the screams that would come from the workpiece prior to either the machine tool or the cutter failing. But as the Fives video on YouTube proves, a small mountain of chips from a deep and wide test cut can be processed efficiently at a pleasant hum, even on five separate spindles. The proof is in the performance, and further improvements are on the horizon.

The Indian Machine Tools Manufacturers’ Association (IMTMA) is all set to organize IMTEX 2015 and Tooltech 2015, to be held from January 22-28, 2015 at the Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (BIEC).

IMTEX 2015, the Indian metal-cutting machine tool exhibition offers a one of its kind platform to showcase the exhaustive range of innovations and technological refinements in the complete product segment of metal-cutting machine tools. Nine hundred and eighty exhibitors from 26 countries and visitors from as many as 57 countries participated in the last exhibition held in January 2013. Predominantly the biggest machine tool show in the whole of South and South East Asia, IMTEX 2015 will be the largest IMTEX show ever. Now that the emphasis is on “Make in India” and Government has announced various enhancement schemes, the show will be carrying tremendous value for the exhibitors and delegates wherein a record number of business enquiries and related activities like product launches, dealerships, joint ventures, etc. are expected.

Concurrent with IMTEX 2015, IMTMA is also organizing Tooltech 2015, an exhibition of cutting tools, tooling systems, machine tool accessories, metrology and CAD/CAM. IMTEX manifests recent innovations in technology, design and product development to achieve competitiveness and excellence in the Machine Tool Industry.Tooltech 2015 will unveil yet again the explicit range of cutting tools from the stable of the world’s leading brands.

Highlights
One of the highlights of 2015 will be an increase in the number of industry and association delegations participating along with country pavilions. IMTEX will involve other important events like an international seminar on machining technologies, academia and industry interface, academic seminars, UDAAN delegation, academia pavilion, ‘exhibitors night’, etc.
IMTEX 2015 is the hotspot to witness the unfolding of trending technologies and to upgrade your knowledge on manufacturing and metalworking processes and latest machines and cutting tools available in the industry that can enhance your productivity and profitability.

Tooltech 2015
Tooltech is a premier event concurrent to IMTEX 2015 showcasing machine tool accessories, metrology and CADICAM cutting tools, tooling systems and current trends in the tooling industry. Tooltech manifests recent innovations in technology, design and product development to achieve competitiveness and excellence in the machine tool industry. It highlights recent innovations in technology, design & product development with the aim to bring cost competitiveness in all metal working operations. 17″‘ in the series Tooltech 2015 will unveil yet again the explicit range of cutting tools from the stable of the world’s leading brands.

Academia Pavilion
In the year 2011 IMTMA introduced the Academia Pavilion to invite prestigious institutions that have done commendable work in the area of research and development to participate in the IMTEX Academia Pavilion. The pavilion provides Indian academic and R&D institutions to showcase their capabilities and R&D activities related to Machine Tools and Manufacturing Engineering Fields. Such collaboration between industry and academia offers mutual benefits as it facilitates innovation in industry and at the same time ensures industrial relevance in academic research.

The Academia pavilion at IMTEX Forming 2014 showcased best projects and research work from 24 institutions including one from United Kingdom. The Academia Pavilion at IMTEX 2015 will be an opportunity to participate in sponsored activities, interact with renowned Indian experts and foreign professionals, network with leading players in the industry and interact with officials from IMTMA Technology Centre.

IMTEX is a flagship event for the Indian Metal Cutting Industry. It is South and South-East Asia’s apex exhibition showcasing the very latest trends as well as technological re?nements from India & other global players. The mega event attracts visitors from a wide spectrum of manufacturing and ancillary industries starting with key decision and policy makers as well as industry captains who are keen to source latest technologies and manufacturing solutions for their production lines. IMTEX has come to symbolise as a one-stop forum where customers can experience ‘live’ display of the products enabling them in the decision making process to enhance their manufacturing capabilities.

The 17″‘ in the series IMTEX 2015 will spearhead a wide range of opportunities for everyone connected to metal-cutting, machine tool users, manufacturing experts, technocrats, researchers, policy-makers, academia and even budding engineers and technology graduates.