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To best serve customer interests, Dormer Pramet has built a new Experience Centre on its premises in Šumperk. The goal is to concentrate expertise from around the world and develop new products and features in the field of indexable and round tools.

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The existence of Dormer Pramet’s tools starts in the form of powder. Overall, the company uses 44 different powder materials in various combinations for its indexable inserts. These are produced with dies that are manufactured by the company itself. Some 350 different dies are used by Dormer Pramet for its inserts. Depending on the size and geometry of the inserts, hydraulic and electrical presses are used with a compaction pressure of up to 50 tonnes. This process results in inserts that are bound by a sole mechanical strength (also called “green strength”), making it possible to move them without damaging their form before they are hardened.

The journalists were given a guided tour on how our tools and inserts are manufactured, along with a visit to our brand new Experience Center, which included a number of machining demonstrations. @m_und_w#dihw, #NCFertigung, #VDI-Z, #Fertigung, @ETMM_mag@prxagentur pic.twitter.com/Ujs4SoYS1U

The company’s main customer focus is on the general engineering sector, although its products can be found in diverse environments ranging from maintenance departments to international railway, automotive and aerospace manufacturers, and – last but not least – tool and mould-makers.

The XP Centre is home to the company's materials team, which focuses on researching the properties of substrates, developing new CVD and PVD coatings and improving the implementation of the cutting edge. It also features a laboratory equipped with state-of-the-art technology, such as electron microscopes, 3D scanners and a machine for measuring material wear during repeated stress.

In 1951, Pramet started in Šumperk with the production of sintered carbide. Since then, it has grown into a company that recorded the production of 22.5 million indexable inserts in 2011. Since 1999, the company has belonged to the Sandvik Group. In 2014, Dormer Tools and Pramet Tools merged, creating Dormer Pramet. Today, Dormer Pramet has more than 1,400 employees all over the world. The production units are located in Šumperk and Sao Paulo, Brazil. The company is a global supplier of tools for the metal-cutting industry with an impressive range of products.

Šumperk is a small city, located roughly three hours east of Prague. To get there, you have to cross many kilometres of deep Czech forest. At the end of this trip, visitors are met by a long-standing company, which drives its products and developments forward with great innovative power.

Last year, Dormer Pramet in Šumperk, Czech Republic, inaugurated its Experience Centre. During a tour of the new and old buildings, the manufacturer of indexable inserts presented itself as an innovative company with a comprehensive R&D department and state-of-the-art technology.

The core range of Dormer Pramet is built around an assortment of high-quality, fit-for-purpose hole-making, milling, turning and threading tools and features everything from solid to indexable, high-speed steel to solid carbide, general purpose and high-performance application tooling.

The production area in Šumperk covers 13,500m². Here, roughly 20 million indexable inserts are produced. Most of them (around 80%) are standard inserts, the rest are special or custom-built models. Šumperk is home of Dormer Pramet's indexable inserts as well as many other departments. It serves as the sales headquarters for Central and Eastern Europe and is also home to company R&D, logistics, marketing and product management departments.

The front part of the first floor of the Experience Centre was designed after Pramet’s signature product, the indexable insert. (Source: Stahl/ETMM)

Afterwards, the inserts are moved to the next production hall in which the sintering process takes place. This heat treatment gives them the needed strength for machining hard materials. During this process, the inserts are exposed to temperatures between 1,200 and 1,400 degrees celsius. The parts shrink during this treatment and are hardened.

The core of the Experience Centre is a testing room equipped with modern machine tools and measuring equipment. This allows Dormer Pramet to test the functional properties of product prototypes and verify whether the cutting tool meets expectations. In addition to testing, the Experience Centre is also equipped for training courses. Not only Dormer Pramet’s own sales team can be trained here: Customers also have the chance to experience the tools live and test their machining capabilities directly on different machines.

The next production step is the grinding stage, giving the inserts their final surface and geometry. Periphery grinding, chamfering, top and bottom grinding and cutting edge rounding are all part of the final machining process. The final steps are cleaning and coating. The inserts feature either physical vapour deposition (PVD) or chemical vapour deposition (CVD).

US cutting tool manufacturer Tool Alliance celebrates 50 years of highly successful business in March 2022.

March 15, 2022 - US cutting tool manufacturer Tool Alliance celebrates 50 years of highly successful business in March 2022. During this time, the company has grown steadily and in the process has built an enviable reputation for the quality and durability of its solid carbide and indexable carbide cutting tools. Tool Alliance makes extensive use of CNC grinding machines from various manufacturers, but has chosen to standardize the machines’ control systems on NUM’s Flexium CNC platform and NUMROTO software, primarily for reasons of performance and production efficiency. Tool Alliance is one of the largest licensees of NUMROTO in the United States. Founded in 1972 and still privately held, Tool Alliance operates a number of company-owned factories – its principal manufacturing facilities are located in Huntington Beach, California, and in Fort Myers, Florida. The company’s cutting tool products and services include such renowned brand names as Ultra-Tool, RoundTool Laboratories, Tungsten ToolWorks, Routco and Mil-Tec. All five brands are sold worldwide, and are supported by shared research, design, engineering, manufacturing, marketing and sales facilities. The owner and president of Tool Alliance, Dave Povich, is no stranger to the cutting tool industry. A past-President of the United States Cutting Tool Institute (USCTI), he has worked for the company since 1987. According to Povich, “NUM is our CNC technology partner, which creates a win-win situation for both companies. We benefit from having a direct technical input to NUMROTO software development, while NUM gains valuable feedback on the design and production of the very latest cutting tools.” Tool Alliance’s innovative Ultra-Tool Series 365 high performance end mills are a case in point. Designed specifically for the machining of exotic materials, these solid carbide tools feature a patented variable-helix geometry combined with a proprietary edge preparation/PVD coating combination that allows for world-class dynamic milling of tool paths, including most slotting cut applications. The tools are produced on high performance 5-axis CNC grinding machines using NUMROTO, employing monitored tool run-out, real-time deviation compensation and the latest diamond abrasive technology utilizing advanced wheel truing equipment. Mark Wortsman, Tool Alliance’s technical director, said that collaborating with NUM has multiple advantages. “The NUMROTO team is very supportive and always amenable to suggestions, which makes life a lot easier for us, as well as our customers. For example, we recently suggested adding categories for collets, and some new features for wheel probing and automatic 3D collision checking; these have all been implemented in the latest version of NUMROTO software.” “We consider the 3D-simulation capabilities of NUMROTO to be the most accurate in the tool grinding world; they help us to optimize tool programming by preventing any grinding errors that might otherwise be caused by imperfect wheel measurement or incorrect machine alignment.” Wortsman also points out that NUM’s software helps simplify shop floor management. “Over the years we have built an extensive library of tools that we have produced with NUMROTO. The NUMROTO team has done a superb job of incorporating the library in a centralized industry-standard SQL database which can be accessed by any of our machines or programming stations. The database can store tens of thousands of tool programs which can be accessed by several hundred users–at the same time if needed.” “It is much easier to backup a single centralized database file instead of having to backup files from the computers on each machine–we perform automated backups several times a day, just to ensure productivity continuity in the event of a machine breakdown. Software updates are also handled very efficiently. As soon as a key NUMROTO update is available, we can bring all our machines, regardless of make or model, up to the same software revision level.” Many of Tool Alliance’s CNC grinding machines are equipped with automatic loading systems to facilitate overnight production–in fact, some run for two days in a row without interruption and without the need for any manual compensation. To keep the tool dimensions within tolerance, the company relies on the NUMROTO software’s ‘measurement in process’ feature, which automatically measures tools after grinding and applies appropriate compensation. A number of projects undertaken by Tool Alliance have warranted installing early generation CNC machines and then retrofitting them with NUM’s latest motors, drives and CNC systems. According to Steven Schilling, General Manager of NUM Corporation, “Again, we were able to help. Our CNC team in Chicago provided local support, and we were able to improve the performance of the machines’ spindles and axes. It has been, and continues to be, a pleasure to be a partner to the success of Tool Alliance.” NUM will be exhibiting at the GrindingHub trade fair in Stuttgart, Germany, from May 17-20, 2022. ENDS   Ultra-Tool, RoundTool Laboratories, Tungsten ToolWorks, Routco and Mil-Tec are registered trademarks of Tool Alliance.