Do you disassemble/assemble holders between jobs?

[SlaveCam]

Do you disassemble and assemble tools between different jobs, or always have default tools that once assembled, are never taken apart? We are trying to reduce tooling costs and this issue came up, as a lot of assembled tools are just standing there and waiting for use.

[JParis]

I do not....I have my tool libraries, I have my holder libraries....

Times are I use what already exists, I am just importing tools from a similar job...otherwise I pick a tool, add an appropriate holder and move on...

In my case, even though all(27) of my HMC spindles are the same, each machine having 160 tool carousel, there are so many different jobs running in these machines that I cannot always be sure the tool assembly I have already exists in that machine....jobs do occasionally get moved from machine to machine for scheduling purpose and needs.

I have actually done a count of just trying to standardize taps in one machine, between cut, sprial & rollform taps, pre-plate & post plate, inch and metric I could use up a chunk of the tooling capacity for a machine. 

[JParis]

2 hours ago, SlaveCam said:

Do you disassemble and assemble tools between different jobs, or always have default tools that once assembled, are never taken apart? We are trying to reduce tooling costs and this issue came up, as a lot of assembled tools are just standing there and waiting for use.

I will also note a bit more...the HMC's tooling gets set up and left, we may run several thousand parts, then turn the job off but as an OEM things get turned off/on all year long and from year to year.

On our VMC's that do short run protoypes & short qty <2000 usually, tooling is always moved in & out as the machines only have 30 tool capacity....tools get setup and broken down for each as they go.

[Jake L]

3 hours ago, JParis said:

short qty <2000 usually

2000 is a low qty for you guys? Our largest qty's are around 2000. 

5 hours ago, SlaveCam said:

Do you disassemble and assemble tools between different jobs, or always have default tools that once assembled, are never taken apart?

If we expect the job to repeat the tooling stays assembled in a rack. Tooling for prototype / one off parts gets fully assembled and disassembled every time.

Most of our parts vary too much to do standard tooling. Earlier this year we were cutting a 10 x 12 x 20" chunk of aluminum. The following job was a piece of duplex stainless 3 x 12 x 30". The next one was a little copper part 1 x 4 x 6". 

Is the majority of your tooling cost in buying new tools? Or you just don't want so many assembled tools sitting around?

[JParis]

34 minutes ago, Jake L said:

2000 is a low qty for you guys?

Yup and these are generally single work order releases...there will be follow ons.  We have parts that we make 100k+/yr and these are not small little lathe parts but milled parts that run on a tombstone 2 ops, 40 complete each cycle....so yeah, keeping that smaller qty stuff in our vertical area helps keep the HMC area humming

https://imgur.com/dxe7Gga

[cncappsjames]

5 hours ago, SlaveCam said:

Do you disassemble and assemble tools between different jobs, or always have default tools that once assembled, are never taken apart? We are trying to reduce tooling costs and this issue came up, as a lot of assembled tools are just standing there and waiting for use.

As always, it depends. Repeat work/Often Used = keep assembled. Prototype/One-Off = disassemble.

Tooling costs can be quite significant... sometimes exceeding $1k USD per tool assembly. However that being said, something that MUST be weighed is the cost of a machine waiting for a holder/tool due to a "cost saving" measure.

JM2CFWIW

[Jobnt]

58 minutes ago, Jake L said:

2000 is a low qty for you guys? Our largest qty's are around 2000. 

Hahaha. 2000 is a very small run for us. As in a "Limited edition".  

Usually we're on the order of 50,000 to 100,000 per product line.

[gcode]

5 hours ago, Jobnt said:

Usually we're on the order of 50,000 to 100,000 per product line.

 

at this place 2 parts is a rarity

4 of the same part running at the same time is a once in a blue moon occasion.

our regular parts have tool boxes that are supposed to contain all the tools needed to run that part.

with the usual one off part, we just load the tools right out of the box and into the spindle

loading them in the tool magazine is a waste of time

[SlaveCam]

Sounds like we're all on the same page here. One of our multitasking machines is dedicated to prototyping and the occasional need of extra holders (especially the expensive hydraulic ones) makes you consider just borrow one from the standard tool rack, as they are easy to take apart and put back again. There could be many months between "standard jobs" . I would not disassemble any shrink fit holders and special tools for sure. Our tool management system has all the information required for re-assemble.