Domestic machine shops and other manufacturers ordered $156.9 million worth of cutting tool products during November 2014, a drop of 18.9% from the October total but a slight increase (0.4%) from the November 2013 result. The figures are drawn from the monthly Cutting Tool Market Report (CTMR), compiled and presented by the U.S. Cutting Tool Institute (USCTI) and AMT – the Association for Manufacturing Technology.
The CTMR is based on actually figures reported by participating companies and represent about 80% of the U.S. market for cutting tools, according to the report’s presenters.
Inasmuch as cutting tools are high-value, high-volume consumable products, the report reflects recent activity by operations that produce machined parts for downstream manufacturing.
As a record of cutting tool consumption, the presenters offer the CTMR as “a monthly statement on U.S. manufacturers’ consumption of the primary consumable in the manufacturing process – the cutting tool.”
In this way, CTMR differs from AMT’s monthly U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders report, which tracks machine shops’ and manufacturers’ investments in new production equipment.
The November total for new machine tool orders also declined.
“Although this month registered the lowest volume of cutting-tool shipments we’ve seen since 2013, this 18.9% decrease is in part due to the record breaking sales we had in October,” observed Brad Lawton, chairman of AMT’s Cutting Tool Product Group.
“Year-to-date shipments are on par with 2013,” Lawton continued. “As manufacturers’ backlogs continue to grow, we expect shipments to rebound before the end of the year (2014).”
