- Email: [email protected]
Business is bad – so let's cut marketing!
In Business
Business is bad – so let’s cut marketing! Consultant editor Ken Brookes visits MACH 2010 at the NEC...
M
achine-tool and tooling exhibitions have a twoyear cycle. In oddnumbered years, the only major show in the world is EMO, which alternates between Milan and Hanover. It used to be the pan-European show, meaning Européenne Machines Outils, but is now the Exposition Mondiale d’Outils, the World Tooling Exposition. In even-numbered years, such as 2010, every industrialised country, from France and Germany to the US and Japan, holds its own tooling show, a major shop-window for its indigenous tool suppliers and importers. Britain’s tooling exhibition, MACH 2010, took place at Birmingham’s NEC – the National Exhibition Centre – in early June, not quite filling two of the more than 20 halls available. As usual, I looked for the major UK merchandisers of hardmetal tools, but where were they? Almost all were missing, or virtually invisible, just when – as Britain emerges from a deep recession – they could be expected to be out in force, looking hard for business. But no. A senior representative of one of the companies, who had better remain anonymous, told me that the key hardmetal manufacturers – including Sandvik, Kennametal and Iscar – had got together and decided that business was so bad, none of them should exhibit at MACH 2010. And so it was. Except that Sandvik had a small stand, “to service machine tool manufacturers whose exhibits used Sandvik Coromant tooling; and Kennametal, whose even smaller stand was ostensibly to showcase “measuring equipment.” I was reminded of a visit I made some years ago to JIMTOF (the equivalent Japanese national machine tool exhibition in
16
MPR July/August 2010
Osaka. On that occasion the Japanese carbide manufacturers decided that business was really tough, so the show would have no Japanese hardmetal at all. This being Japan, there really was no Japanese hardmetal: no exhibition stands, no Japanese carbide or carbide tools on other manufacturers’ stands, no Japanese carbide tooling on exhibited machine tools. But of course there was plenty of carbide tooling interest – from Sweden, Germany, the United States, Israel and other countries. They captured most of the substantial sales made at the exhibition, to an extent that permitted the new suppliers to set up dedicated distribution and manufacturing facilities in Japan. Thus business, already bad, became much worse for local manufacturers. Admittedly, hardmetal business in the UK is nowadays of a much lower level than in Japan, but it was nevertheless sad to see manufacturers
following the old tradition that, when business is bad and sales are down, they should cut promotion and marketing. Bring them back, of course, when business is thriving and marketing effort much less necessary. As in Osaka, however, it was by no means all gloom and despondency for tool users attending MACH2010 in the hope of renewing contacts and finding ideas. The 20-odd carbide toolmakers and distributors reported a brisk flow of enquiries after a slow start (due to non-synchronisation of the parallel subcontracting show) with many needing to restock after the bottomingout of the recession. In truth, with most hardmetal “majors” absent, there was not a great deal of novelty to be seen by those who had attended EMO 2009 in Milan, but the latter must only have been a small proportion of those at MACH. With diligent searching, we managed to pick out a few items of interest to MPR readers.
Figure 1. WNT claims amazing productivity gains for grade HCX1125 hardmetal inserts.
0026-0657/10 ©2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Figure 2. WTX Change drills have injectionmoulded interchangeable heads of sintered hardmetal.
Cut down a forest, build a catalogue mountain By far the biggest cutting-tools exhibit at MACH2010 was that of WNT, a business unit of Ceratizit, joint venture of Austria’s Plansee-Tizit and Luxembourg’s Cerametal. In its bid to capture the tooling requirements of Britain’s host of SME companies, it was giving away a metaphorical mountain of monstrous catalogues, each listing close on 50,000 tools and inserts (not all made by Ceratizit) on 1800 pages. One advantage was that those accepting the generous offer of this weighty tome could scarcely manage to carry, in addition, the literature of any competitor. Let’s take a look at a few of the innovative tools and materials showcased by WNT at MACH. Unfortunately, some suffered from a surfeit of spin and a paucity of practical information. One such was the steel-turning hardmetal insert grade HCX1125 (Figure 1)
18
MPR July/August 2010
with so-called “Dragonskin” tool coating. WNT claims that the user can choose between 5 to 10 times existing tool life without changing machining conditions, or the previous tool life combined with vastly improved cutting parameters. Whilst these extravagant claims may or may not be true, we’re back in the realms of magic that I hoped were long gone, with no details of composition, properties, microstructure, coating or test reports to back them up. If the product is so good, it is surely patented, and if it is patented (especially if it’s a US patent) there’s no reason not to publish. There must also be at least a few comparative machining tests in existence, if only those carried out in-house. To assume that customers – even SME customers – are incapable of understanding basic cutting-tool technology takes us back to the days, 35 or more years ago, before simple textbooks on the subject became available. The only “technical” information in press releases was that the ISO513 applicational code of this “miracle” hardmetal was P25, which for years has been an unofficial “shorthand” for steel milling rather than turning. Inserts of this material could be of considerable interest to PM toolmakers, but with the lack of useful data it’s a question of trust, guesswork or a possibly expensive trial – even if test inserts are free. Elsewhere, WNT’s praiseworthy WTX Change drilling system, with injectionmoulded interchangeable heads of solid sintered carbide (Figure 2), has
been expanded with new grades for stainless steel and aluminium, and lengths up to 8x diameter. Also new to the UK marketplace were A2780 15mm square milling inserts with eight cutting edges, a neat piece of doublesided axial pressing. In 45° approach milling, these inserts are capable of feeds up to 0.45mm per tooth at 6mm depth of cut.
Solid and insert tooling Though not a hardmetal sinterer, the German company Mapal is a world-class manufacturer of solid and insert carbide tooling. Its stand featured the extensive range of Mapal Optimill solid carbide endmills, as well as the company’s expertise in cutters and inserts of superhard materials. OptiMill cutters (Figure 3) are available in versions for use with steel, cast iron, aluminium and stainless steel, as well as for hard milling and chamfering. Examples of specialised cutters available as standard within the range include types with internal cooling and for milling materials with hardness up to 65 HRC. Some of the cutters incorporate novel substrate/coating combinations. Mapal is one of Europe’s most experienced manufacturers of superhard cutting tool inserts, basically of sintered hardmetal with small pieces of polycrystalline diamond (PCD) or polycrystalline cubic boron nitride
Figure 3. Optimill solid hardmetal endmills.
metal-powder.net
(PCBN) inserted at the cutting edges or corners (Figure 4). PCBN indexable inserts are used on ferrous materials such as case-hardened steels, cast iron and superalloys, and PCD inserts on non-ferrous materials including the carbon composites which play an increasingly important role in aerospace. Both types are available in a choice of grades, as many as six in the case of PCBN. With some inserts, precision chipformers are laser-cut into the superhard tool material. Other companies also featured developments in solid sintered carbide. Guhring, for example, with two excellent hardmetal plants in Germany – Konrad Friedrichs in Kulmbach and G-Elit in Berlin – offered precision-finished, high-performance RF100 endmills with unequal helix angles to minimise vibration and promote smoother cutting. A variety of coated and uncoated grades were listed for this range but a “tool test” described in the catalogue, showing 7.5 times the tool life of a completely unidentified “competitor”, would impress only the utterly gullible. At least the competition was identified as having a TiAlN coating, whereas the equivalent description of the coating on the Guhring mill was the cryptic “FIRE.” No details were given of comparative tool designs, substrate compositions, coating thicknesses, microstructures, or physical and mechanical properties, any or all of which might have influenced the test results. So we’re back to magic again. SGS attracted attention with its display of solid carbide routers for aerospace carbon composites, prolonging operational life and eliminating fibre breakout. Polish company Pafana distributed its own comprehensive catalogue on a lightweight CD-ROM. Fullerton (UK) promoted its expertise in constructing special tools of solid hardmetal. And Paul Horn impressed, as usual, by its command of tricky injection-moulding techniques for complex carbide inserts. Lots of technology, then, for cutting edges, but – not unexpectedly in a non-EMO year – somewhat short in “cutting-edge technology” where PM materials and applications were concerned. But it was encouraging to see the resurgence of optimism where the future of Britain’s manufacturing industries is concerned.
metal-powder.net
Figure 4. PCD and PCBN superhard cutting inserts.
July/August 2010 MPR
19
Business is bad – so let’s cut marketing! Consultant editor Ken Brookes visits MACH 2010 at the NEC...
M
achine-tool and tooling exhibitions have a twoyear cycle. In oddnumbered years, the only major show in the world is EMO, which alternates between Milan and Hanover. It used to be the pan-European show, meaning Européenne Machines Outils, but is now the Exposition Mondiale d’Outils, the World Tooling Exposition. In even-numbered years, such as 2010, every industrialised country, from France and Germany to the US and Japan, holds its own tooling show, a major shop-window for its indigenous tool suppliers and importers. Britain’s tooling exhibition, MACH 2010, took place at Birmingham’s NEC – the National Exhibition Centre – in early June, not quite filling two of the more than 20 halls available. As usual, I looked for the major UK merchandisers of hardmetal tools, but where were they? Almost all were missing, or virtually invisible, just when – as Britain emerges from a deep recession – they could be expected to be out in force, looking hard for business. But no. A senior representative of one of the companies, who had better remain anonymous, told me that the key hardmetal manufacturers – including Sandvik, Kennametal and Iscar – had got together and decided that business was so bad, none of them should exhibit at MACH 2010. And so it was. Except that Sandvik had a small stand, “to service machine tool manufacturers whose exhibits used Sandvik Coromant tooling; and Kennametal, whose even smaller stand was ostensibly to showcase “measuring equipment.” I was reminded of a visit I made some years ago to JIMTOF (the equivalent Japanese national machine tool exhibition in
16
MPR July/August 2010
Osaka. On that occasion the Japanese carbide manufacturers decided that business was really tough, so the show would have no Japanese hardmetal at all. This being Japan, there really was no Japanese hardmetal: no exhibition stands, no Japanese carbide or carbide tools on other manufacturers’ stands, no Japanese carbide tooling on exhibited machine tools. But of course there was plenty of carbide tooling interest – from Sweden, Germany, the United States, Israel and other countries. They captured most of the substantial sales made at the exhibition, to an extent that permitted the new suppliers to set up dedicated distribution and manufacturing facilities in Japan. Thus business, already bad, became much worse for local manufacturers. Admittedly, hardmetal business in the UK is nowadays of a much lower level than in Japan, but it was nevertheless sad to see manufacturers
following the old tradition that, when business is bad and sales are down, they should cut promotion and marketing. Bring them back, of course, when business is thriving and marketing effort much less necessary. As in Osaka, however, it was by no means all gloom and despondency for tool users attending MACH2010 in the hope of renewing contacts and finding ideas. The 20-odd carbide toolmakers and distributors reported a brisk flow of enquiries after a slow start (due to non-synchronisation of the parallel subcontracting show) with many needing to restock after the bottomingout of the recession. In truth, with most hardmetal “majors” absent, there was not a great deal of novelty to be seen by those who had attended EMO 2009 in Milan, but the latter must only have been a small proportion of those at MACH. With diligent searching, we managed to pick out a few items of interest to MPR readers.
Figure 1. WNT claims amazing productivity gains for grade HCX1125 hardmetal inserts.
0026-0657/10 ©2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Figure 2. WTX Change drills have injectionmoulded interchangeable heads of sintered hardmetal.
Cut down a forest, build a catalogue mountain By far the biggest cutting-tools exhibit at MACH2010 was that of WNT, a business unit of Ceratizit, joint venture of Austria’s Plansee-Tizit and Luxembourg’s Cerametal. In its bid to capture the tooling requirements of Britain’s host of SME companies, it was giving away a metaphorical mountain of monstrous catalogues, each listing close on 50,000 tools and inserts (not all made by Ceratizit) on 1800 pages. One advantage was that those accepting the generous offer of this weighty tome could scarcely manage to carry, in addition, the literature of any competitor. Let’s take a look at a few of the innovative tools and materials showcased by WNT at MACH. Unfortunately, some suffered from a surfeit of spin and a paucity of practical information. One such was the steel-turning hardmetal insert grade HCX1125 (Figure 1)
18
MPR July/August 2010
with so-called “Dragonskin” tool coating. WNT claims that the user can choose between 5 to 10 times existing tool life without changing machining conditions, or the previous tool life combined with vastly improved cutting parameters. Whilst these extravagant claims may or may not be true, we’re back in the realms of magic that I hoped were long gone, with no details of composition, properties, microstructure, coating or test reports to back them up. If the product is so good, it is surely patented, and if it is patented (especially if it’s a US patent) there’s no reason not to publish. There must also be at least a few comparative machining tests in existence, if only those carried out in-house. To assume that customers – even SME customers – are incapable of understanding basic cutting-tool technology takes us back to the days, 35 or more years ago, before simple textbooks on the subject became available. The only “technical” information in press releases was that the ISO513 applicational code of this “miracle” hardmetal was P25, which for years has been an unofficial “shorthand” for steel milling rather than turning. Inserts of this material could be of considerable interest to PM toolmakers, but with the lack of useful data it’s a question of trust, guesswork or a possibly expensive trial – even if test inserts are free. Elsewhere, WNT’s praiseworthy WTX Change drilling system, with injectionmoulded interchangeable heads of solid sintered carbide (Figure 2), has
been expanded with new grades for stainless steel and aluminium, and lengths up to 8x diameter. Also new to the UK marketplace were A2780 15mm square milling inserts with eight cutting edges, a neat piece of doublesided axial pressing. In 45° approach milling, these inserts are capable of feeds up to 0.45mm per tooth at 6mm depth of cut.
Solid and insert tooling Though not a hardmetal sinterer, the German company Mapal is a world-class manufacturer of solid and insert carbide tooling. Its stand featured the extensive range of Mapal Optimill solid carbide endmills, as well as the company’s expertise in cutters and inserts of superhard materials. OptiMill cutters (Figure 3) are available in versions for use with steel, cast iron, aluminium and stainless steel, as well as for hard milling and chamfering. Examples of specialised cutters available as standard within the range include types with internal cooling and for milling materials with hardness up to 65 HRC. Some of the cutters incorporate novel substrate/coating combinations. Mapal is one of Europe’s most experienced manufacturers of superhard cutting tool inserts, basically of sintered hardmetal with small pieces of polycrystalline diamond (PCD) or polycrystalline cubic boron nitride
Figure 3. Optimill solid hardmetal endmills.
metal-powder.net
(PCBN) inserted at the cutting edges or corners (Figure 4). PCBN indexable inserts are used on ferrous materials such as case-hardened steels, cast iron and superalloys, and PCD inserts on non-ferrous materials including the carbon composites which play an increasingly important role in aerospace. Both types are available in a choice of grades, as many as six in the case of PCBN. With some inserts, precision chipformers are laser-cut into the superhard tool material. Other companies also featured developments in solid sintered carbide. Guhring, for example, with two excellent hardmetal plants in Germany – Konrad Friedrichs in Kulmbach and G-Elit in Berlin – offered precision-finished, high-performance RF100 endmills with unequal helix angles to minimise vibration and promote smoother cutting. A variety of coated and uncoated grades were listed for this range but a “tool test” described in the catalogue, showing 7.5 times the tool life of a completely unidentified “competitor”, would impress only the utterly gullible. At least the competition was identified as having a TiAlN coating, whereas the equivalent description of the coating on the Guhring mill was the cryptic “FIRE.” No details were given of comparative tool designs, substrate compositions, coating thicknesses, microstructures, or physical and mechanical properties, any or all of which might have influenced the test results. So we’re back to magic again. SGS attracted attention with its display of solid carbide routers for aerospace carbon composites, prolonging operational life and eliminating fibre breakout. Polish company Pafana distributed its own comprehensive catalogue on a lightweight CD-ROM. Fullerton (UK) promoted its expertise in constructing special tools of solid hardmetal. And Paul Horn impressed, as usual, by its command of tricky injection-moulding techniques for complex carbide inserts. Lots of technology, then, for cutting edges, but – not unexpectedly in a non-EMO year – somewhat short in “cutting-edge technology” where PM materials and applications were concerned. But it was encouraging to see the resurgence of optimism where the future of Britain’s manufacturing industries is concerned.
metal-powder.net
Figure 4. PCD and PCBN superhard cutting inserts.
July/August 2010 MPR
19