As technological progress accelerates exponentially around the world, all types of manufacturers are feeling the effects of shortening global innovation cycles. New, increasingly high-tech parts and products are bringing requested or released at ever-shorter intervals. Just think how quickly the phones in our pockets are considered out of date or consider the pace of change in automotive technologies.

The major pain points manufacturers everywhere face today mostly come from this same root cause. The shorter innovation cycles across almost every industry are leading to increasingly complex workpiece features, ever-higher standards and expectations for precision, and often tighter timescales as companies downstream battle to be first to market.

Together, all these pressures are squeezing manufacturers’ margins to breaking point. Even where clients aren’t a factor, in-house labs have to meet tight deadlines and work with even tighter budgets. Always, manufacturers are keeping their eye on the competition, and asking themselves who’s adapting to the market changes more efficiently and effectively.

Yet it also comes down to a question of survival, as manufacturers ask themselves if they can keep pace with the rate of technological advancement at all. How can manufacturers get ahead, and stay ahead, when everything keeps moving so quickly?

At AXILE, we believe agility in mindset and motion makes all the difference. That means bringing together speed and precision — not one or the other.

Seeing the market need for truly high-speed and high-precision machining, our team at AXILE set out to create the new standard for full 5-axis machines. We call it agile smart machining.

For agility in motion, we decided to shake up the stagnant processing speeds that the market had been stuck with for too long. We’ve redefined high-speed machining by introducing our proprietary SMT™ compensation system. With this new technology, processing times can be reduced dramatically. The machine automatically mitigates potential machining errors arising from spindle vibrations, thermal expansion, or a host of other potential side effects of running at full-throttle. This automatic compensation allows simultaneously high precision and industry-leading machining speeds, for superior metal removal rates, quicker machine start-up and cool-down, as well and longer component lifetime.

For agility in mindset, we know data is king. That’s why we developed our groundbreaking ART™ monitoring system, to empower manufacturers with data-driven strategies to confidently take on new challenges. ART™ uses high-tech sensors within the machine to track machine and component utilization, health, and lifetime, and to flag potential issues. By eliminating unexpected downtime, and providing full transparency into the health and real-time operations of individual machine components, ART™ enables manufacturers to optimize production and scheduling, and react decisively to new orders or opportunities.

Additionally, AXILE 5-axis machines make easy work of any kind of metal, while meeting the world’s highest standards for precision finishing. Together, all this means manufacturers can pivot instantly to new opportunities, reassured of their machine’s reliable performance. That’s the real benefit of production agility.

——

Technology, innovation, and general market dynamics are all speeding up while precision standards are ever increasing. Agility is and will continue to be key to keeping on top of tech advances, let alone getting ahead and staying ahead of the competition.