O/T------Best Manufacturing Story------

[mmetzinger]

OK, today has been one of those days. I guess it comes from the weather, or the end of the year, or I don't know what, but things are getting very strange around where I work. So I thought I'd share today......

 

First off, I have been working on a project for a few months and now it is reaching completion. The mold maker grabs me and the mill operator and the lathe operator and takes us over to a Bridgeport to show us how he is inspecting our work from the past 3 months. As we were machining these parts that all go together, we were told we had .0002" to hit what we had to hit. Overkill, yes, but we are always within .0005" real world, so no harm done. Fact of life. The part is big (for us), 18" long, 13" wide, 9" tall, and he is inspecting how an insert fits into a pocket we made. We were told, as I said above, to hit all of our numbers on this block to .0002". He is telling us that the inset is sitting .020" too high. Ok....

 

So, here is the scenario. It's gonna get long winded, so if you think this is already boring, go to another O/T.

 

The block is sitting on the table of the Bridgeport. There is an indicator mounted in the spindle. The block is really a core block, with the core being about 6” tall, and a standing wall around the perimeter, about an inch thick and an inch tall. Inside the core area is a hole and the insert fits in the hole. There is a tight tolerance floor between the core and the outer wall. (Looks like a steel volcano with a Great wall of China around it.) The moldmaker got the dimension from this floor to a low point on the insert. Sounds OK to me (yeah so what if I was programming to tenths, a Bridgeport can check that close…..)

 

So, part is on mill table, mold maker zeros indicator off on the stackup which is sitting on the good tight tolerance floor, he dials off in X, has to drop the knee because the low point on the insert is out of the range of the indicator. As he gets in position and then brings up the knee, sure enough, there is .020” too much stock on the insert (Z direction).

 

Mind you, there is me, the mold maker, a lathe operator, a mill operator and a designer all standing around looking at this. We are all wondering what is going on, and all of my other jobs are on hold now ‘cause I aint programming. Then someone asks, “Hey, what about that cardboard that is under the part……

 

Well, the mold maker didn’t want to scratch the bottom of this block, so he put some corrugated cardboard under the part (between the part and the table). Seems that cardboard aint that flat……

 

25 minutes of my life I will NEVER get back!!!!!

 

Moral of the story:

 

Never use cardboard as an inspection aid

 

 

More to come later….Heard some great ones after this occurred. Everyone reached in their bag of memories and pulled out some dooozies…

[mmetzinger]

and I am not trying to say that was the best story ever, just a little funny. I just wanted to hear some others, so I got the ball rolling........

[Dan Bedore]

we do some vacuum forming of plastic and were having a few problems with our process. one bright idea from you guessd it an engineer was

( can't you just form the part without vacuum?) needless to say they have never lived that one down.

[Hardmill]

Ok Matthew,

Who was it? If you must e-mail me.

 

PEACE

[Scott Bond]

I had bad boy primer gray 4 door 1ton dually pick-up lowered 6", with low pro tires & alloy wheels. One day It had a large plate of Aluminum stock in the back for a mold base.

----On that day this happened.---

We had a customer that sent us a "Dimensional History Engineer" He knew absolutely everything about everything,( he was 22)

We were all out in the parking lot on break, and he looked at my truck

and said::::::::::::

"That plate must be really heavy it's even made the truck low in the front."

He was the most disconnected I have ever met,,it still makes me laugh out loud.

 

[ 12-10-2003, 07:47 PM: Message edited by: Scott Bond ]

[kathy]

Somewhere in the past we had a similar thread!

 

Someone should find it and bump it forward. There where some grreat ones...

 

Kathy

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

That wasn't Ryan was it????

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Where I work we manufacture our own product and assemble it as well. On the assembly floor have a "Manufacturing Engineer". One day we had some "White Hot" parts that had just come back from Outside Processing. The current Rev was say A2. The part was made to Rev. A. It could have been easily modified in the conventional dept. to be current. The guy took a red BALL POINT PEN and marked an X on the side the shows to the customer, and that part HAD to ship at 5:00pm. I wish I could have been in the bosses offe to hear the explanation for that.

[Fig sign]

They say U :

Now take off 0.02 mm from a top of very complex insert .

But it must be 0.02 mm true , no tolerance .

MUST BE 0.02 !

After an hour or too : now take off 2 milimeters more !

[TimHollis]

I had a customer back in the states, big company, that had just gone from ACAD to SolidWorks.

 

The 1st job comes along in SW, I quote on it and get it, I ask for a 2d print with all the critical dims called out.

 

I’m told that they are going paperless, and nobody but me is asking for 2d prints, get with the times.

 

So I IGES out into MC7 at the time, and deliver the molded part, it’s accepted, and I got paid.

 

Same exact thing for the 2nd job.

 

3rd job comes along, this time by CD, the file is to big to send by e-mail, a lot of details, a lot more complicated than the 1st two. I tell them on the quote, must have 2d print.

 

2 days of telephone calls, e-mails, with the designer, and me saying all along, no print, no steel gets cut.

There are too many attachment points that look critical for sub-components for assembly.

Plastic Shrinks, and I have to figure this into the steel cuts.

 

I get a call from the VP of Engineering, a guy who gets $ 180,000. @ year.

He basically tells me I need to get with the program, NONE of the other vendors are asking for prints any more. Tells me I should invest in more modern software and GET UP TO DATE. Oh, we need the part in 3 weeks, we have to assemble this thing for a show. The quote said 6.

 

Fine, I make the part, I drive the 50 sample shots over, 3 weeks later.

I’m sitting in their conference room by my self, and in comes the companies President, VP, VP of Engineering, the Designer, and the Purchasing Agent.

 

They explain this is part of a product, that is going to revolutionize their market, and their all excited, because I’m holding the last component needed for assembly.

 

I open the box, and start passing out the samples.

The V.P. of Engineering yells at me, while holding the part in his hand.

WHAT THE F*CK IS THIS! IS THIS A F*CKING JOKE!!!!

 

I sit back and tell him, no, it’s the part you sent me.

 

My part’s are about the dimensions of a pack of cigarettes, it was supposed to be about the size of a book of matches.

 

Oh Sh*t!!!!!!!!!

 

I, pull out the P.O. showing where I had to have a 2d print, I pull out a copy of all the e-mails between the designer, and the V.P. of Engineering, reading out loud, the responses, which were not very professional.

Their own Purchasing Agent, backed me up, all the way.

 

And then, I pull out the original CD with the file.

 

We go to the V.P of E’s office and he opens the file, and starts pulling dimensions off the solid, a veneer in 1 hand & a part in the other, my part is hitting all the numbers!

 

Seems the designer liked to work big, and forgot to set the final scale, before burning the file!

 

I sit down in the chair and in about 4 minutes I pop out a 2d print from the V.P.’s printer.

 

I hold it up, and ask him, why can’t they do that from a solid, when they want it quoted.

 

It seems the B.S. line I was getting from everybody, was coming from the Designer, who did not know how, to make prints, in SW, and the V.P. was a true believer.

 

The President looks at me and say’s, I’ll pay you 3 times the quote on top of the original price, I need parts in a week, you can have a check today for the full amount.

 

The V.P. of Engineering, jumps in with, that will blow the budget for this out of the water.

 

The President says, not at all- It’s coming from YOUR CHRISTMAS BONUS!!!!!

 

You should have seen this guy’s face! I lost it, the V.P. of E, says- what! and after a few seconds is stuttering like Don Knotts, lost in space. I start laughing so hard, I had to leave the room.

 

I’m in the hall with the V.P. and the Purchasing Agent- howling away. The President and the V.P. of E, are going at it inside, people are starting to poke their heads out of their offices and look at us like we were crack addict's that wandered in from the street- I'm still laughing so hard, that tears are coming down my face.

 

I CNC'ed the first 50 pcs, and sand-blasted them.

Took my time redoing the mold.

 

They got their parts, and I always got 2d prints after that.

 

 

[ 12-11-2003, 06:37 AM: Message edited by: TimHollis ]

[d00d]

We had a new employee with "tons" of experience hold a scale up to a cavity and tell me the parting line was .0005 to deep from the floor of the pocket.

[robk]

Tim,

 

Man, does that ring a bell...

Our sales guys never try to get the material list for the jobs, or 2d files with tolerancing on them. Solids are great to look at, and get a visual of that job, but when there are no components included in the solid it leaves for a guessing game. Basically same thing happened in here (few times). It never had a happy ending though, because the sales guys didn't have the balls to call back the customer with any questions, so they came up with their own answers.

Wrong answers... Funny now, wasn't funny then.

 

Rob

[Müřlıń®]

quote:

---

My part’s are about the dimensions of a pack of cigarettes, it was supposed to be about the size of a book of matches.

---

Thats a funny story Tim .....one thing I cant figure out is why the guy scaled up the part in the first place.....when its zoomed in on the screen it wouldnt matter how small it is.

 

 

I will say this though, going over a set of tedieous 2-d print adding scale dims in a diffrent color to 100's of DIM's is not my idea of fun....did it for years. The scale button is sooooooo much easier

 

Murlin teh use your monitor, save a tree

[JG]

I worked at a shop that did alot of vacuum brazing, one of the senior management thought that the fixtures we used were to stop the parts from "floating" in the vacuum.

 

this actually explained a number of things to me.

[I2B4U]

I had a component for a hydraulic actuator for a reputable international company, building a commercial plane, sent me a print. when I went to model it, there was a section that couldn't be modeled. so I called the buyer, who put me through to their engineer, who said he would get right back to me. I recieved an e-mail from him saying that he spoke with the people in his cad department and they had concurred, it could not be modeled. SO he attached 4 photo's and the instructions were "make it look like this". I'll never forgget the quality manager's face when I gave him the e-mail and the photo's and informed him that "this is your inspection criteria"