(MAG: Erlanger, KY) -- MAG, a global machine tool and systems company, introduces industry’s fastest volumetric error compensation (VEC) system capable of analyzing and correcting positioning errors in all machine-tool axes simultaneously to achieve machining accuracies never before possible on large parts. The MAG VEC methodology reduces the time to determine needed error compensations from days to hours, and integrates both linear and rotary axes into the tool point compensation process, according to Jim Dallam, MAG’s VEC product manager. Developed and proven by a government/industrial consortium, multi-axis VEC was conceived especially to improve machining accuracies for large machine tools needed to produce today’s large, monolithic and complex-shaped parts.

The new VEC system received a Defense Manufacturing Excellence Award from the National Center for Advanced Technologies (NCAT) in December 2009. A Boeing official called it a “groundbreaking process” that will dramatically reduce assembly and fitting costs—perhaps $100 million a year on large programs like the F-18 or 700 aircraft series.

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