Okuma America’s 2013 Technology Showcase

Okuma America Corporation’s Technology Showcase event, held December 10-12, 2013 in Charlotte, N.C., was the company’s largest to date, both in attendance and the number of CNC machines shown. Held annually, the event is designed to give attendees the opportunity to see and gain hands-on experience with Okuma’s latest technology and discuss their individual needs with a variety of industry experts.

Here are some highlights of the Showcase:

• More than 400 attendees, from three countries and 33 states.
• 27 machines under power on display, cutting parts for the aerospace, oil and energy, automotive, medical, gun and fluid power industries.
• Demonstrated 16 THINC apps—many of which were designed and written by distributor applications engineers. These applications allow the user to do everything from monitoring coolant concentration and pH, to limiting operator access and receiving remote alarm and message notifications directly from the CNC machine.
• On-machine demonars (brief seminars conducted at the machine with actual cutting demonstrations) were held throughout the event and included titanium machining, gear cutting, automation and gaging.
• Attendees had the opportunity to try the THINC OSP-P300 CNC on the THINC Try It stations, including the new, 19” P300 control monitor. Three lucky Try It users won iPads.
• A live hand scraping demonstration was conducted, and attendees were given the opportunity to show their skill and perform hand scraping.
• Okuma’s mechanical and electrical exchange departments displayed various versions of components, including new, refurbished and damaged spindles, boards and cam boxes.
• 30 members of Partners in THINC were on-hand to demonstrate peripheral equipment and software and to discuss and solve productivity issues.

“We attribute the strong interest in this year’s Technology Showcase to our customers’ desire to lead their markets while also enhancing their own productivity,” says Tim Thiessen, vice president of Sales, Okuma America Corporation. “The opportunity to have hands-on, personalized access to such a wide variety of CNC machine technology and expertise can be a game-changer in terms of creating technological advantage.”

Next year’s Okuma Technology Showcase is scheduled for December 9-11, 2014.