Small-part manufacturing is a rapidly growing industry sector.

      In line with the growing demands of such parts for products made by industries like medical, connectors, automotive, IT, appliances, etc., the traditional precision industry users of Swiss-type cutting tools, such as watch and instrument manufacturing are no longer alone with these applications. More and more suppliers to the aerospace and defense industries are users of small tools because of the growing role of electronics, hydraulics, etc. for control-units and -mechanisms.

      A growing number of various small components are machined, and although many of them are larger than those that go into watches, the parts considered here are mostly of much smaller dimensions than those made generally in the engineering industry. Usually made from bar stock in sliding head machines, the components machined with Swiss tools are in the diameter-range of 0.5 to 32 mm, with 5 to 20 mm being the most common.

New solutions needed

      With components being small, the machining zone in sliding-head CNC-automatics is more cramped than in many other machine tools. Tools have to be small and access to adjust and change tooling is limited. Cutting tools are often placed in gangs or on turrets so as to be able to machine close to the spindle collet as well as to minimize the tool change time. Cutting tools for this area have also tended to be complicated and of special designs - often unnecessarily expensive - leading to the tool-cost part of the total production costs being higher than in other machining areas. Moreover, the tool technology for the area of small, precision-turned parts has up to now used out-dated concepts when compared to tools for other areas.

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