b'a finished part, eliminating the needfind enough skilled people to workmachining more appealing to the to use other machine tools. at the shop. Multitask machinespeople entering the workforce. Several advantages come withallow shops to be productive andWith younger generations having completely machining a part in oneprofitable with fewer skilled em- grown up using smartphones and machine, and the most significantployees, and it is common to seeplaying video games, it is difficult is the reduced cost of labor. Old- one person tending more than oneto interest people in old machines school methods would move themachineusually expending littlewith dirty handles. Lets face it: The part from machine to machine untileffort and often just keeping ma- days of shimming parts on a grinder it was complete. A shaft is a goodchines full of stock and fresh tools. with cigarette paper have passed. example. First, someone would useModerntechnologymakesNewer generations want to enter a saw to cut a blank from a bar. The blank would be taken to a lathe, where the blank would be turned. After turning, the shaft would go to a milling machine to have holes or keyways cut. Finally, the shaft might go to a grinder, where the bearing journals would be ground.Eachoftheseoperationsre-quires a setup, which introduces more cost. But all these operationsNEWWere I to start a shopM - M I N I B Otoday intent on generatingT Xprofit, a multitask machine likely would be oneof my first purchases.Entry-level, desktop model for your workbench & can be completed in a modern mul- machine. titask machine, thereby eliminating all the extra setup time. Add au-tomation, such as a bar feeder or robot, and the machine could pro-duce completed parts unattended.Completing a part in one setup also enhances precision and ac-curacy. When a part is processed across multiple machine tools, it is easy to introduce errors. As the part is moved from machine to machine, a new setup is required, and any error in that setup is transferred to the part geometry. Parts completed in a mul-titask machine are not subject to er-rors from multiple setups. In some cases, geometric tolerances are so stringent that a multifunctional ma-chine is necessary, not a choice.Even if old-school machining was as efficient and accurate as a multi-task machine, it is unlikely we would ctemag.com/cteguide.com43Multitask.indd 43 8/15/23 2:28 PM'