IMTS 2026 is just weeks away, and the show floor will be packed with new equipment worth tracking down. In this episode, Laura Davis highlights four machines making their case at McCormick Place this September: a 5-axis mill-turn center built for aerospace engine components, a compact CNC turning center for small high-volume parts, a flexible cylindrical grinder, and a high-torque 5-axis horizontal machining center for large structural parts. Here's where to find each one, and what makes it worth the walk.

Below is an excerpt from the episode: 

Welcome back to Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast. I'm Laura Davis, and today's episode is a little different — instead of pulling from the latest issue, I'm looking ahead to IMTS 2026, coming to McCormick Place in Chicago, September 14th through 19th. I've picked four machines from the show floor that I think are worth building into your walking route, so if you're headed to Chicago, keep a notepad handy.

Before we get into it, if you're new here, subscribe on your favorite podcast app. New episodes every week.

Alright, let's go.

We'll start in aerospace, with a machine built around a problem that shows up constantly in that industry: repeatability across multiple setups.

Aerospace manufacturers producing engine cases and housings deal with tight repeatability requirements, and every time a part gets reclamped for a new operation, there's a chance for error that leads to mismatched components and scrap. Mitsui Seiki's HU63A-5XT is a 5-axis horizontal machining center that combines milling and turning capability, so a part can go from roughing to finishing in a single setup — no reclamping, no stacked-up error.

The machine offers thirty-five and four-tenths inch, that's nine hundred millimeter, X, Y, and Z travels, with simultaneous 5-axis machining. Its high-torque spindle delivers up to seven hundred ninety-seven foot-pounds — one thousand eighty-one newton-meters — of torque, with positioning accuracy of four hundred-thousandths of one thousandth of an inch, or plus or minus one micron in metric terms.

It's built to handle hard-to-cut materials like titanium, with cutting feed rates from four thousandths up to nearly three hundred ninety-four inches per minute — that's point-one to ten thousand millimeters per minute — across all three linear axes. Rapid traverse hits four hundred seventy-two inches per minute on the X axis and nearly nine hundred forty-five inches per minute on Y and Z, while the rotary axes move at twenty-one hundred sixty degrees per minute and thirty-six hundred degrees per minute.

It comes standard with an automatic pallet changer using nearly twenty-five inch square pallets, plus an automatic tool changer, and it handles drilling, boring, tapping, and reaming in the same setup. It runs on a FANUC Series 501 iS-A controller built for high-speed, multitasking operation.

If you're in aerospace and clamping-related scrap is eating into your yield, this one's worth a stop. You'll find it at booth 338700 in the South Building.

From aerospace, let's shift to a very different production challenge: small parts, high volume, and not a lot of floor space to work with.

Shops producing high volumes of small, intricate parts — think EV input shafts, mid-shafts, valve fittings, anything over about two inches in diameter — need equipment that's fast and versatile without eating up floor space or budget. Mazak's QRX-50MSY is a CNC turning center that packs in milling capability, a second turning spindle, and Y-axis functionality, all in a compact footprint built specifically for small-part production.

It's fifteen percent smaller than prior designs, with a floor footprint of about a hundred nineteen by eighty-seven inches, while holding onto the same throughput and cycle times. The modular design shares components across the machine — identical left and right spindles, matching upper and lower turrets — which helps keep the machine's cost down. The slant-bed design handles bar stock up to two inches in diameter with a six-inch chuck. Main and second spindles run twenty-horsepower motors up to six thousand RPM, and the turrets carry twelve stations each, twenty-four tool positions total, with seven-horsepower rotary tool spindles also running up to six thousand RPM.

About the Podcast
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.

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