[poliCNC]

I am trying to justify a trip to Mazak's Touch the Future event in Kentucky. Anyone ever been there? Any reasons why I should (or shouldn't) attend this event?

[psychomill]

GO, GO, GO!!!!!!!!

Its an amazing event on machine technology and the direction of CNC. Whether you like Mazaks or not, you're gonna love it. Its a jaw dropping show, especially if you're not accustomed to "higher end" machines.

[poliCNC]

Thanks for your input, psychomill! Any specific reasons to go I can use to encourage my boss to go?

[TR MFG]

When is it?

[little bubba]

Went last year, some other theme, but it was awesome. They are susposed to have like 40 machines up and running in the tech center this year, last year it was only like 15. You get pretty much free reign of the factory, which is just incredible if you like machines. The big horizontals that have a little robot that comes and gets worn tools and brings them to a central location where one guy can run 7 machines. The pallet changers that service X number of machines, really cool, you can watch them for hours. Massive gantry mills with like 20x40 foot pallets loaded with all kinds of different castings. You can talk to the employees and ask them all kinds of questions. They let you into their refurb building, which was pretty neat. We had a blast.

Our Mazak salesman is cool, and we hung with him most of the time, we started a factory tour with a Mazak honcho and said screw it and went and saw what we wanted to see. You local salesman will have been there before and knows the factory pretty well.

On top of all that after we arrived, they wined us and dined us, before they brought us out for a fancy dinner at some place in cleveland we met up in the bar, and they wouldn't let us pay for any of our drinks, and then after we had an incredible feed, we went back to the hotel and closed the bar. Lots of fun, also, you'll meet all sorts of other machinists and owners in your area, since I assume your going as a group, this was kind of nice since I got to put a face to some shops I had only heard of.

Go, its a good time, that is unless every Delta plane you step foot on breaks and you end up having to spend the night in Dallas.

[little bubba]

I just finished reading you post, reasons to get the boss to go. Some of the machines they have you can kind of grasp how they work and what you can do with them, but until your in front of them, and watch them doing all kinds of cool stuff in their tech center, you can't appreciate it. They have a couple of seminars that are pretty good too, that will explain to your boss exactly why you need a new toy to play with.