PM’s Top Five Online Articles for 2024

I’m always curious about which articles Production Machining presents that our online audience finds most valuable. Sometimes, I have a good idea, but other times not so much. Regardless, there’s value in learning what is getting the most online eyeballs as that is an indication of the types of articles/article topics we should pursue moving forward.

Here are the top five online articles for 2024 and a bit about why I appreciate each:

5. German Project Yields Three New Medical Machining Processes. I learned about this joint project during an open house at Paul Horn Technology Days event at the cutting tool manufacturer’s headquarters in Tubingen, Germany. Called ZykloMed, this project is funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research and includes participating partners Index, Paul Horn, Beutter Präzisions-Komponenten GmbH and the wbk Institute for Production Engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The project’s goal was to develop new manufacturing processes for the economical machining of medical implants with multifunctional and non-round bionic designs. The three manufacturing processes developed were eccentric turning, polygon turning and turn-whirl milling as my article explains.

4. Machining More Than Metal. Although the majority of machining articles I write involve parts produced from metals, I have written a variety of plastics machining articles over the years, too. Plastics can be finicky in their own ways to machine compared to metals. This article describes information I’ve gleaned from a few machine shops offering guidance specifically for polyetheretherketone (PEEK), glass-filled plastics and carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics. What’s also nice is that this is an example of an “evergreen” piece that should continue to get many more views in the years to come.

3. The Value of Swiss-Types Milling Rectangular Medical Parts. Medical device, implant and equipment manufacturer Boston Scientific determined that a Swiss-type machining platform could be more beneficial than milling equipment for a rectangular component in its insertable cardiac monitoring system. Year-round production of this small, rectangular part previously involved numerous milling machines and required multiple milling operations. In addition, each machine required an operator to tend it at all times. Now, the Swiss-type produces the parts complete in three minutes compared to seven (unattended) while holding the part’s targeted 0.0002-inch profile tolerance. It also eliminated a manual deburring operation.

2. Why Do Machinists Say Tenths Instead of Ten Thousandths? This is neat example of what the Precision Machined Products Association (PMPA) calls its “Craftsman Cribsheet.” These brief articles describing concepts that all machinists should know are often included in the monthly PMPA section, which has been part of every Production Machining issue since the first one in January 2001. This particular Craftsman Cribsheet was written by David Wynn, the PMPA’s technical services manager. As he explains in what is also an evergreen piece, tenths in inch base thinking (non-machinist thinking) would be 0.1 inch, whereas tenths in machine shop language (thousands base thinking) is 0.0001 inch.

1. Broaching Tool For Lathes Used to Slot Inconel Parts. That this is the top article is intriguing, especially given it describes a possible solution to a very specific machining process: broaching. The broaching tool system from CNC Broach Tool is said to be the industry’s first indexable-insert-style broaching tool, providing two cutting edges per TiN-coated, micro-grain carbide insert. The article explains how Powill Manufacturing uses this tooling system to offer a dependable solution for creating blind-hole broached slots in heat-treated Inconel aerospace parts. These slots needed to be oriented with a tight positional tolerance of only 0.004 inch relative to the other slots. Since the slots were blind, they couldn’t be broached in a conventional broaching machine, and the tight tolerance would be nearly impossible to hold once unclamped from the spindle.

If one of these articles resonated with you, or, if there’s another article not listed that you appreciated reading from 2024, email me to let me know why. I look forward to developing helpful articles for the precision machining industry in 2025.