First-Half machine tool orders down. (Assembly Lines).

ROCKVILLE, MD--According to the American Machine Tool Distributors Asssociation (AMTDA) and the Association for Manufacturing Technology, June U.S. machine tool consumption totaled $253 million. This total was down 7.2 percent from May and down 28.5 percent from the $354 million total reported for June 2000. With a year-to-date total of $1.4 billion, 2001 is down 26.7 percent compared with the same period in …