As we read a lot in the news today about the Oil Spill in the Gulf, the economy being such a mess, the war in the Middle East, and all the other negative things they like to talk about all the time, it is hard to find anything good in the news. This being said, it also makes it hard to find much to be positive about in our daily lives. I have preferred to only catch the news on a rare occasion and mostly to see what the weather is doing and to read the paper only for the local information.

Metalcutting fluids are ubiquitous in machining, and almost every manufacturing professional has seen advertisements for "green" metalcutting fluids. Suppliers to manufacturers insist that environmentally responsible coolants and lubricants can function just as well as conventional products, without requiring extensive modification of the equipment now operating on your shop floor.

Can it actually be that we are starting to see some changes for the better in the industry? I just learned that General Electric announced their first increase in profits since sometime in 2008 when the economic crisis started. This is just one company as I am sure there are more that are starting to see their way out of the tumble we have taken.

I am sitting here at my desk wondering how many people actually thought about what the 4th of July really means to us as a country. I know to most of us it means a day off and a celebration in our town and fireworks. But, to alot of people it means a lot more than that.

When does it make sense to recondition metalcutting tools rather than buying new? Will cutting tools of the future eliminate reconditioning altogether?

In this world of business and manufacturing things have taken some real drastic changes in the last couple of years. But that is not news to anyone. What is becoming news is that in this industry, I think we are seeing some changes for the better. Spending time talking with people about their marketing needs, I am finding that there is a little more positive feedback than there was a few months ago. Maybe it is just the warmer weather or that it is almost the middle of the year and they are seeing some increases in profits, or maybe it is just what my father used to call TOC. TIRED OF COMPLAINING.

Blogs have made a grand entrance into the marketing realm. Why? They can be a successful marketing tool if done right. Blogs have core components that increase their success such as content, distribution, and frequency, but you need more than that to get people to read it.

Popular blogs have one thing in common, an individual voice. A voice will not only gain readers, but it keeps them. Learn how to create your voice using these 5 blogging tips:

Buying a stand-alone machining center is one thing. Buying one without the prospect of enjoying the flexibility that automation can bring to low-volume, high-mix production, especially at the job shop level, is quite another. Single stand-alone machines, from this point of view, can be viewed as a dead end when it comes to meeting competitive requirements for increased throughput of high-value, complex parts of the highest quality produced with minimum setup and handling. The stand-alone might generate profit today, but how long will the customer be willing to pay for under-utilized labor or missed opportunity due to lack of flexibility. The configuration of machines purchased today can put manufacturers on the fast track to a competitive future.

It's getting harder to imagine any market that isn't benefiting from the latest developments in parts manufactured from advanced composites. "Advanced composites will arguably dominate consumer and production products, especially in the near future," says Bert Erdel, industry consultant and executive technology advisor, Morris Group Inc. (Windsor, CT), "as they have begun to gain wide acceptance in solving energy-related issues."

The rationale for this energy-saving attribute isn't difficult to see in the "lightweighting" and the strength that composites impart to structural components. Their use has taken hold in literally every form of transportation vehicle from rockets to commercial airliners. In fact, there is hardly a category of consumer or industrial product that hasn't benefited from the flexibility in design and the durability in performance that advanced composites deliver.

Last year's surge in medical machining and firearms manufacturing could well be joined or even eclipsed by this years' reemergence of production for applications in the automotive, aerospace, electronics, and hydraulics industries, generating increased interest in Swiss-style machining. This isn't news. But what may be surprising is that the venerable, tried and true Swiss automatic CNC lathe coninues to evolve, adding bells and whistles where needed, or conversely stripping one—like a guide bushing—away to maximize its efficiency in machining parts complete. Without a guide bushing, the resulting machine, generally of fixed-headstock design, is one that can produce about 70% of the parts under 20-mm diam that are processed on Swiss–style machines with the advantages of not having to use ground bar stock and being able to use other bar shapes.