A repeat commodity part is finished in a second operation on the RoboDrill Med Cell. The first operation runs 24/7 on the JobShop Cell at Cheshire-NC.
For example, when producing a geo-monitoring part job that requires 3200 pieces every three months, it was taking five working days with nine hours per day of attended operations to run the job for a total of 45 hours on the previous machine setup. When the job was moved to the JobShop Cell, labor costs were saved because operations only needed tending every 2.5 hours over four-and-a-half days. Finally, the job was moved to the Med Cell, reducing job run-time to two-and-a-half days and only needing to tend the machine every six hours. “We have cut our cost in half on this one job. By running 24/7, we can now do a week’s billing for this job in just two- and-a-half days,” said Brenneman.
In another example, when producing aerospace parts made of 347 stainless steel, it was taking three days to run this job on the pallet system, plus one more day to deburr the parts by hand. Manual deburring was an enormous challenge due to very tight tolerance requirements to hold a 0.002–0.005" (0.05–0.13 mm) edge break on six precision +0.001/-0.0 thru holes on both sides. Cheshire-NC was typi- cally running 300–400 pieces at a time on the prior machine. The stainless job was moved to the Med Cell, which now runs 600–700 parts at a time with all of the deburring hap- pening on the RoboDrill. The RoboDrill is able to deburr the entire part because the part can be flipped over to present all sides to the machine spindle. “With the machine doing all the deburring work, the result is much more uniform and consis- tent than doing this by hand.” The Med Cell is also equipped with a Renishaw spindle probe, which is used to find part- thickness variations, and make machine adjustments in order to hold the edge break. “I have been able to win back and keep work in the US that may otherwise have gone overseas—this is extremely im- portant to me. I think it shows that small machine shops can
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compete and survive by embracing technology and using it to level the playing field with overseas competitors. And for near- ly five years, I was completely on my own,” said Brenneman, who hired his first employee, a machine tool operator, in late 2011 to assist with machine setup and operation. Being able to leave the shop untended with the cells run- ning jobs has been further aided by the ability to remotely monitor operations with software called Asset Monitor by Lan- glais Computer Consultants (Bristol, CT) which runs on smart devices—another recommendation by Methods. Others have taken notice of the success of Cheshire-NC. As of this writing, Cheshire-NC is completing its sale to a larger turning shop named Swiss Precision Turning in Brattle- boro, Vermont, which also runs lights-out operations. Swiss Precision Turning wants to expand its capabilities and product offerings by adding in-house CNC milling to its CNC Swiss turning and CNC lathe operations. ME For more information from Methods Machine Tools Inc., go to
www.methodsmachine.com, or phone 978-443-5388.
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