Lean Manufacturing

[Thad]

Democrat. Republican. Democrat! Republican! DEMOCRAT!!! REPUBLICAN!!!

[Joe788]

With a REAL 5-Axis machine, common tooling, common workholding and common material sizes, a customer could call you at 9:00am, and depending on the current schedule, you coud have that part run or running by lunchtime if it had already been run before.

No doubt. We do that occasionally with our 5 axis work. OP10 is a raptor op, OP20 is on the FMS. And that's the perfect process for parts of that style, volume, and price. But if you're trying to use that process in place of a volume production process - you'll never even get the job. That extra dollar worth of material, or the extra handling to put a dovetail on the blank, will put you right out of the mix.

[Guest]

...But if you're trying to use that process in place of a volume production process - you'll never even get the job...

... unless you put a tombstone/multi-part grip system on that 5-Axis. Raptor (which I use and recommend - for the right application) is not the only game in town.

 

:cough: Lang :cough:

 

:cough no prep op other than a crimp :cough:

 

[Newbeeee™]

... unless you put a tombstone/multi-part grip system on that 5-Axis. Raptor (which I use and recommend - for the right application) is not the only game in town.

 

:cough: Lang :cough:

 

:cough no prep op other than a crimp :cough:

 

Lang are the bees knees. We have 5 here now and ally blocks are straight in with no crimping.

[Sticky]

I was looking at setting up a few tombstones with Lang vises for quick turnaround work... But at $28,000 per tombstone for just the vises, I am going to have to hold off for a while.

[Guest]

Tooling up an HMC pallet is CRAZY expensive. That is no exaggeration. Making it as flexible as possible though at least helps justify the expense.

[Joe788]

... unless you put a tombstone/multi-part grip system on that 5-Axis. Raptor (which I use and recommend - for the right application) is not the only game in town.

 

:cough: Lang :cough:

 

:cough no prep op other than a crimp :cough:

 

 

Like everything else in manufacturing, there's always trade offs and compromises. That can still work, but now you're using a much more expensive machine, with much more expensive workholding, to make parts at an output that's still quite a bit lower than a horizontal with dedicated fixturing. If using the 5 axis machine as a mini horizontal lets you access a feature that you'd otherwise need an extra operation for - then it's a tradeoff that can be worth making. Here's an example of a simple little manifold we made in pretty good volumes, and did it on a trunnion machine just for that reason. 3 sides are raw stock, so it's one and done.

 

 

If it didn't need that extra hole on the top, we would have just made them on a less expensive machine, with higher throughput, like one of its sister parts:

 

[Sticky]

Definitely everything is a trade off. I'm more of a done in one guy myself, I HATE extra operations. That said I also like unattended runtime quite a bit too...

 

Depending on what your definition of "pretty good volumes" is, there could be an advantage of throwing that part on your FMS (didn't know you had one, what do you have?) and fixturing it like your second manifold but on all 4 sides of a tombstone so that you could have a minimum of 28 pcs in process instead of 4.

 

I know you already know all that

 

I wanna hear about your FMS though.

[THEE THAINZ™]

A friend told me years ago (30 plus) Profit comes down to 1 simple equation. Time, efficiency, and manpower. Optimize all three to full potential and you are as profitable as possible forget one and your losing money.