Time will tell, but increasingly, there is evidence that points to the fact that bar-fed mills could well represent the future of complex, small parts manufacturing. To see this coming paradigm shift, one need only walk the halls of the latest IMTS, where a number of major machine tool manufacturers displayed their own, unique offerings of bar-fed milling machines. Much as the rise in popularity of multitasking, turn-mill centers and Swiss-type lathes made thousands of manufacturers re-evaluate their programming methodologies, a move to bar-fed milling should cause a similar sort of second look at a company's approach to CNC programming and CAM software selection and usage. Much like a traditional multitasking turn-mill center, programming a bar-fed mill involves more than simply programming milling in one place and turning in another.
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