Gross new orders of machine tools for U.S. consumption were $277.53 million in October 2005, down 5.2% from September's $292.63 million but 25.4% higher than October 2004's $221.31 million, AMT-The Association for Manufacturing Technology and the American Machine Tool Distributors' Association jointly reported on Dec. 12.
Orders for metal-cutting machine tools were $264.65 million in October, down half a percentage point from $266.03 million in September. Orders for metal-forming machine tools were $12.88 million in October, down 51.6% from September's $26.61 million.
For the first 10 months of 2005, gross new orders of machine tools totaled $2.55 billion, 11.3% higher than the comparable 10-month total of $2.291 billion in 2004.
