MOLDMAKING TECHNOLOGY

Retrofitting and Updating CNC Controls Keeps Milling Capabilities on Cutting Edge
In 1987, Century Tool and Gage Company (Fenton, Michigan) bought its first Heyligenstaedt vertical mill with the first Fidia CNC control system that was available in North America. Mickey Guckian, manufacturing manager of programming for Century Tool, was there. “I remember when we purchased the first Fidia control. It was installed on a two-spindle Heyligenstaedt vertical mill. I was running that machine at the time,” he says. “The new control had dual eight-inch floppy drives, which was unique back then, and it gave us the ability to greatly improve the feed rate for the complex milling routines we were running for the large compression molds we were manufacturing.”

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