TOOLS AND TOOL CRIB

[HEAVY METAL]

I was walking around my area today looking at all the tooling lying around that has been used one time and thrown aside as no good. i think are shop is wasting alot of money in tooling by not getting all the life they can out of endmills ,inserts and drills etc. and as for special tooling such as truing endmills etc , guys just dont keep track of them and it always seems we have to make a new one for each job. I would like our shop or at least my area to get better organizied and efficient. "lean" i guess would be the proper term. if fourm members would way in on how there shops keep track of tooling and make employees responsible for the shops tooling, maybe i could implement some of those ideas here. we are a small job shop about 40 people.

 

thanks heavy

[Fred @ Slate Industries]

All of are "Worn" tooling

Goes into bins that the ToolMakers

(Manual mill) pick through and Destroy.

Then it goes into the scrap carbide bin

Or gets Resharpened.

We have an awesome drill sharpner

That has paid for itself 100 times over.

[jeff]

I try to keep things organized.

We have a decent sized cabinet with 8 drawers about 5ft wide and 2ft deep.

I bought a labelmaker and labeled everything!

It lasted about 1 week and my guys reverted back to throwing tooling anywhere they thought was good enough.

It's almost impossible to keep track and stay organized with people that really don't give a sh*t!

As far as a drill sharpener goes,I bought one of those Drill Doctors from Home Depot,the thing works great!

Especially for the ones who can't hand sharpen a drill.

[mayday]

quote:

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It's almost impossible to keep track and stay organized with people that really don't give a sh*t!

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want some more Jeff? we have a shop full of em. to top it off they pigs also,they sit on there arse allday watching the numbers on the screen and dont clean a thing

[HEAVY METAL]

it always made jobs easier to know where stuff is at so you dont have to look all day for it. when i was on the floor i tried to keep track of all tooling. some people dont understand that a little effort and extra work can make things run smoother for them

[jeff]

lol No thanks MayDay,I have all I can handle right now.

As I look around my office though,it's pretty bad too,but at least I know where everything is lol.

 

 

I think.

[resjun]

how about saying stay clean and you might see some extra green.when there is no pride there no way

[Thad]

quote:

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if fourm members would way in on how there shops keep track of tooling and make employees responsible for the shops tooling

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Yeah, we track it about like you currently do.

 

quote:

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It's almost impossible to keep track and stay organized with people that really don't give a sh*t!

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+1 That's all I've got to say.

 

Thad

[SledGeek]

It really sucks to "babysit " tooling......I've worked in alot of places with alot of different ways of doing this, but the only way that seems to work the best is the squeeky wheel theory.

 

Although it seems childish to have the people that care constantly bitch to management about the people that don't, sometimes it's the only way to get stuff enforced.

 

Then when everything is organized and life is easier,the point will be clearer to the people who don't know how nice organization really is.

 

 

Yeah ,riiiiight

[tsewyek]

Our approach is that we have a full time tool crib attendant, who sets up all of the tooling for a given job including presetting the length as well as checking for runout and gets any fixturing required as well as any inspection equipment such as gage pins, thread gages etc. The jobs are prepared on a tool cart which is signed out of the tool crib by the setup person as being complete. The setup person then sets up the job gets it thru inspection then turns the job over to an operator to run. At the completion of the job the setup person comes back to the machine tears the job down and returns everything to the tool crib. During the operation of the job if there is a need for a tooling change the setup person or the tool crib attendant is the only authorized personnel permitted to change out a tool. As a result there is no tooling laying around our shop. There are exceptions of course, we have several large horizontals that we leave the tooling in, one because we have the magazine capacity, and two the jobs are always repeating and they are virtually setup all of the time.

 

My $.02

[CAM-mando]

We are a smaller shop so we can't really afford a tool crib attendant. We do alot of repeat work, so we use Job Boxes. All of the tools for a job go in the box when it is done. They get labled with the job number and a small picture of the part (usually a reduced part of the drawing).

 

Although there is a little cash tied up on the tooling inventory shelf, it seems to be worth the investment. When an order comes through life is alot easier.

 

We maintain a small inventory of standard end mills etc. for general purpose use. We also keep a regrind box. Carbide and large Highspeed get sent out every few months for re-grinds. Lately we have used US Tool. Although they are not the cheapest, their system works pretty well. They give you a heavy duty box. You fill it up, ship it to them. They sort it, evaluate the tools, regrind what can be, bag them and label them, re-pack them in the same box and return them.

 

Periodicaly we go through and pull any jobs that show no signs of repeating and put the tools back in the "general fund".

[tsewyek]

Cam, we too use job boxes before, during and after the job is done. Any job specific tooling and gages, during the job we keep the job boxes for the active jobs in a designated area and they contain backup tooling for the job being run. We also have a form made up showing differnt toolholder types and log what cutter or drill was in what holder, what the flute length was, how far it extended out of the holder etc. We have a library of notebooks by customer that we put those pages in, so that anybody can go back and see how a job was setup in the past and also for consistancy on proven setups.

[Andy]

SOLUTION:

 

ONE (Organized) machinist per machine shop.