The Way to the Future

In years past, job shop owners looking for better machine tools might have focused their scouting efforts on faster cutting speeds or perhaps a slicker nesting package.

That was yesterday. Cutting processes (notably oxyfuel and plasma) are reaching their speed limits. Process control software is becoming far more holistic, extending beyond nesting. With those advances, machine tool manufacturers and customers increasingly are looking to more sophisticated control software and systems that connect multiple machines (or even factories) for productivity gains.