Manufacturers of all sizes take software to new levels.

When starting out in the machine tool business a quarter century ago, Joe Ostrowsky would need a calculator to manually adjust the equipment making parts for use in the aerospace and other industries.

Nowadays at his Delta Hi-Tech manufacturing shop, the same function requires entering numbers into a computer to save time and making for an efficient operation.

"It makes it go much quicker," Ostrowsky said of the software to program the company's machines. "You put it in the computer and the computer tells the machine where to go automatically."

While use of software programs in the machine shop is not new, its application is pushing into new areas and providing new ways to present data and information.

A programs such as CATIA--Computer Aided Three dimensional Interactive Application--has been used to design aircraft and boats and even been applied by architect Frank Gehry in designing buildings.

Such software is changing how information is given from an engineer designing to the person actually making the part, said Brad Hart, president of Roberts Tool Co., in Chatsworth.

"They'll send a digital representation so you can look at it," Hart said. "There's a picture on a computer screen and then they use that to program your machines."

New to discrete manufacturing--those companies making machine tool parts--is software such as Freedom E-log that tracks the performance of individual machines and troubleshoots for problems that idle the equipment.

That data at hand makes for a more efficient manufacturing process.

"With a job shop, when they have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars or perhaps millions, they want the spindles cutting all the time or as frequently as possible," said Dan Gustafson, marketing manager with Fadal Machining Centers in Chatsworth.

There probably isn't a machine shop in the country that doesn't use computers and software to some extent to do business, said Robert Gardner, a spokesman with the Association for Manufacturing Technology, the sponsor of the International Manufacturing Technology trade show.

At the biennial trade show there are often more computers than machines on display, Gardner said.

And those computers and the software running them is a good reason why U.S. manufacturing productivity increased over the past decade, he added.

Small manufacturers benefit because the technology allows for the completion of a higher number of job workloads and for shops to operate for longer hours, Gardner said.

"All these things allow U.S. manufacturers, especially small manufacturers, to be competitive in the global marketplace," Gardner said. "High output and high productivity is how you compete with low wage nations."

Fadal has not fully installed Freedom E-log but does use one element of the program to optimize the run times on its machines by automatically adjusting the spindle speed rate needed for a particular job.

Freedom E-log has been commercially available for several years with a modified version to be unveiled next month at the IMT trade show in Chicago.

New capabilities include multiple languages, viewing an entire factory across multiple machine tool types, watch lists, email reports, and expanded machine interfacing.

The improvements were made following suggestions from customers, said James Siderits, vice president of business development and marketing with Maintenance Technologies, the software designer.

BY MARK R. MADLER

Staff Reporter