On the surface, the recent slowdown in manufacturing activity might be viewed as a justification for delaying capital investments. But a cooler economy presents some valuable opportunities for machine shop managers to prepare for better times to come. When a shop is operating near its maximum capacity, it's difficult for managers to think about cultivating new business or buying equipment. But a decline in one industrial sector may coincide with increased activity in another. Thus, pursuing a new direction is often beneficial for a company's long-term development, and shifting gears may require equipment upgrades.
Arelated opportunity in a cool economy is the reduced cost of financing. As the Federal Reserve Board continues to cut short-term interest rates to stimulate consumer spending, loans for metalworking equipment (typically amortized over 5-7 years) have become substantially more attractive. As a result, it's a propitious time for businesses to finance or refinance capital equipment. This situation enhances the resources of borrowers and creates additional options for obtaining the equipment necessary to keep pace with current technology. Furthermore, astute managers understand that seeds planted in difficult market conditions can represent the distinction between tomorrow's winners and losers.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Tooling Triad - CPC Tooling Technologies - Company Profile
To build exceptionally effective extrusion dies, this shop brings together strengths in three key areas: CNC machining, EDMing and tool room operations.
Unless you are in the middle of a forest, it's hard to look around and not see something made of extruded plastic--the siding on a house, the trim on a car, the frame of a window sash. And even if you are in the middle of a forest, the trees you see are the source of a key ingredient in many of the most advanced and complex extruded products--wood. Wood fiber and wood flours are blended with plastic resin and extruded to make a wide variety of products such as deck planking, hand rails and architectural trim. To add to the growing use of plastic extrusions, emerging techniques allow materials to be extruded as foam and encapsulated in an outer layer that is rigid and weather resistant. Shapes with hollow cross sections in complex configurations are also possible.
CPC Tooling's strategy for meeting this challenge is based on a simple concept. The company must be able to build tooling not only for customers pioneering new applications, but also for customers whose conventional applications require faster running, longer wearing, more flexible and economical tooling. In-line tooling that turns extrusions into finished pieces ready for shipping is one of the shop's specialties.
All For One, One For All
"Designing and building extrusion dies is as much an art as it is science," declares Bob White, tooling manager at CPC Tooling. Mr. White, who has overall responsibility for the production of extrusion dies and related hardware for forming and cooling extrusions, explains: "You have to understand how material behaves as it undergoes the extrusion process and then use that knowledge to design a die and the tooling that goes with it. And you have to understand all of the machining processes that enable you to build that tooling."
At CPC Tooling, those machining processes are available in three key areas, each located in its own facility within the sprawling Crane Plastics plant in Columbus, Ohio. Each one of those areas must be efficient and productive. Each must leverage the capabilities of the other two areas. Each must keep up with current techniques and equipment.
The CNC machining area is anchored by two vertical machining centers. These machines do the three-axis milling of complex die contours often referred to as coat hangers because of their distinctive spreading triangle shape, as well as two-axis milling of tool and die components.
The EDM (electrical discharge machining) area features one ram and six wire machines, whose ability to cut steep tapers in four axes is essential to the extrusion process, which converts material from a simple shape to a complex one. Wire cutting replaceable inserts, which greatly extend the life of a tooling system, is another critical job for this area.
A staff of skilled tool and die makers supplies all of the components that allow dies and other hardware to be assembled into a working system. Two toolroom areas equipped with precision mills, lathes and grinders provide the flexibility and expertise to build, troubleshoot and repair almost any die or tooling that comes their way.
"Every one of these areas is important," stresses Mr. White. "Each one is vital to our strategy. Yet each area requires its own management style and has its own technology needs," he says.
Capable And Productive
CNC machining has proven to be a key asset to CPC Tooling. CNC machining is both capable and productive. It is "capable" because it allows complex die contours to be machined in 3D. It is "productive" because it allows 2D work to be handled on a production basis, with pallet changers and shopfloor programming to keep the machine fully occupied.
Unless you are in the middle of a forest, it's hard to look around and not see something made of extruded plastic--the siding on a house, the trim on a car, the frame of a window sash. And even if you are in the middle of a forest, the trees you see are the source of a key ingredient in many of the most advanced and complex extruded products--wood. Wood fiber and wood flours are blended with plastic resin and extruded to make a wide variety of products such as deck planking, hand rails and architectural trim. To add to the growing use of plastic extrusions, emerging techniques allow materials to be extruded as foam and encapsulated in an outer layer that is rigid and weather resistant. Shapes with hollow cross sections in complex configurations are also possible.
CPC Tooling's strategy for meeting this challenge is based on a simple concept. The company must be able to build tooling not only for customers pioneering new applications, but also for customers whose conventional applications require faster running, longer wearing, more flexible and economical tooling. In-line tooling that turns extrusions into finished pieces ready for shipping is one of the shop's specialties.
All For One, One For All
"Designing and building extrusion dies is as much an art as it is science," declares Bob White, tooling manager at CPC Tooling. Mr. White, who has overall responsibility for the production of extrusion dies and related hardware for forming and cooling extrusions, explains: "You have to understand how material behaves as it undergoes the extrusion process and then use that knowledge to design a die and the tooling that goes with it. And you have to understand all of the machining processes that enable you to build that tooling."
At CPC Tooling, those machining processes are available in three key areas, each located in its own facility within the sprawling Crane Plastics plant in Columbus, Ohio. Each one of those areas must be efficient and productive. Each must leverage the capabilities of the other two areas. Each must keep up with current techniques and equipment.
The CNC machining area is anchored by two vertical machining centers. These machines do the three-axis milling of complex die contours often referred to as coat hangers because of their distinctive spreading triangle shape, as well as two-axis milling of tool and die components.
The EDM (electrical discharge machining) area features one ram and six wire machines, whose ability to cut steep tapers in four axes is essential to the extrusion process, which converts material from a simple shape to a complex one. Wire cutting replaceable inserts, which greatly extend the life of a tooling system, is another critical job for this area.
A staff of skilled tool and die makers supplies all of the components that allow dies and other hardware to be assembled into a working system. Two toolroom areas equipped with precision mills, lathes and grinders provide the flexibility and expertise to build, troubleshoot and repair almost any die or tooling that comes their way.
"Every one of these areas is important," stresses Mr. White. "Each one is vital to our strategy. Yet each area requires its own management style and has its own technology needs," he says.
Capable And Productive
CNC machining has proven to be a key asset to CPC Tooling. CNC machining is both capable and productive. It is "capable" because it allows complex die contours to be machined in 3D. It is "productive" because it allows 2D work to be handled on a production basis, with pallet changers and shopfloor programming to keep the machine fully occupied.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Van-Am Tool & Engineering Celebrates 25th Anniversary
an-Am Tool & Engineering, St. Joseph, Missouri is proud to begin celebrating its 25 th Year of providing quality solutions to their customers' tooling, stamping, machining and manufacturing needs. An achievement not many can claim in today's tooling industry.
When discussing the company's 25 years; Ivan Russell, VanAm's president and co-founder stated, "Great employees and customers with good management are the main factors in our success. You just can't do this type of work without a good crew and we have very little employee turnover." Russell also noted that providing exceptional customer service and being diversified in the services offered and industries served is also important. Van-Am's specialized services include: design and build of progressive, transfer, louver, blank, form and draw dies (these can range from 6" x 6" up to 9' or longer); die maintenance and repair; production stamping and fabrication; general and custom machine work; CNC machining and wire EDM; design and build of jigs and fixtures; machine design, build and repair; custom fabrication and welding; robotic welding and plasma cutting; vibratory finishing; laser cutting and CNC press braking.
With the recent addition of several pieces of equipment, including a new Wire EDM, the company's equipment now includes: four wire EDM's; four vertical CNC machining centers; 13 milling machines; seven drill presses; five lathes; ten grinders including a 24" x 60" surface grinder; six saws; 16 punch presses (up to 600 ton); two robotic welders; three press brakes including a 220-ton 12'6-axis CNC press brake; two shears; a 1500-watt CNC laser cutting system; a 24 cubic foot vibratory finishing machine; and a host of supporting equipment.
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The company operates in a modem 55,000-sq.-ft. facility with 36 employees. Their equipment and talented work force allows Van-Am to serve a wide range of industries including: agriculture, automotive, construction, electrical, fuel/oil, government, HVAC, pharmaceutical and transportation.
When discussing the company's 25 years; Ivan Russell, VanAm's president and co-founder stated, "Great employees and customers with good management are the main factors in our success. You just can't do this type of work without a good crew and we have very little employee turnover." Russell also noted that providing exceptional customer service and being diversified in the services offered and industries served is also important. Van-Am's specialized services include: design and build of progressive, transfer, louver, blank, form and draw dies (these can range from 6" x 6" up to 9' or longer); die maintenance and repair; production stamping and fabrication; general and custom machine work; CNC machining and wire EDM; design and build of jigs and fixtures; machine design, build and repair; custom fabrication and welding; robotic welding and plasma cutting; vibratory finishing; laser cutting and CNC press braking.
With the recent addition of several pieces of equipment, including a new Wire EDM, the company's equipment now includes: four wire EDM's; four vertical CNC machining centers; 13 milling machines; seven drill presses; five lathes; ten grinders including a 24" x 60" surface grinder; six saws; 16 punch presses (up to 600 ton); two robotic welders; three press brakes including a 220-ton 12'6-axis CNC press brake; two shears; a 1500-watt CNC laser cutting system; a 24 cubic foot vibratory finishing machine; and a host of supporting equipment.
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The company operates in a modem 55,000-sq.-ft. facility with 36 employees. Their equipment and talented work force allows Van-Am to serve a wide range of industries including: agriculture, automotive, construction, electrical, fuel/oil, government, HVAC, pharmaceutical and transportation.
From Manual To CNC Mills: A Three-Phase Transition - V & G Dynamic Machine & Tool Inc
V & G Dynamic Machine & Tool, Inc. of Marble Falls, Texas, uses high-end VMCs and CNC mills and employs skilled machinists and CNC operators to support the development of new instrumentation and technology for the semiconductor industry.
When Volker Steffen founded V & G Dynamics in 1988, the company was doing mainly repair work using two manual mills. Mr. Steffen knew that if he had CNC there was the promise of longer runs and production of complex parts--giving access to new markets and increasing sales and profitability. But these benefits come with a cost in terms of capital, training and learning. Mr. Steffen was looking for a way to implement GNC gradually--a transition that took the characteristics of his shop and people into consideration. He discovered an opportunity at an open house held by his local dealer. "I was at an open house at a machine dealer one weekend, and I saw a manual mill with some sort of external motors mounted on the table," Mr. Steffen says. "The dealer showed me how the mill was doing CNC work by having the power feeds move the table, under the control of a PC. Best of all, I didn't have to start using a computer right away. I could just use the power feeds in the 'Teach Mode.' You move the table to a desired position, press 'set' on the pendant, move to the next position, press 'set' again, and so on. At the end of the sequence you press 'run,' and the machine plays back exactly the moves you told it to execute. It's that simple."
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On seeing this, Mr. Steffen first began considering doing more than just manual mill work. V & G had grown to include a lot of small-volume (1 - 500 piece) production work, but Mr. Steffen was not at the point where he needed to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a single CNC. So in 1993, he decided to first retrofit one of his manual mills with the "intelligent power feeds"--a basic two-axis Servo II automated control system with the "Teach" pendant, made by Servo Products Company of Pasadena, California--which he mounted himself on a Summit manual mill with a Sargon digital readout. The cost of the retrofit was well within his reach, and the promise of increased production made the whole deal attractive. Within days, production was at levels he had never seen before, and both he and his machinists were using the "Teach Mode" feature without problems.
Such use of a basic retrofit package makes sense for shops where owners and operators don't have prior experience with CNCs. In the case of V & G, its manual mills had essentially become three different machines with one simple retrofit: one that still does manual work, one that uses the Teach Pendant and one that can perform CNC work (when connected to a dedicated PC). The DRO interface adds accuracy to the Acme lead screw by using the scale for positioning accuracy instead of the encoder on the motor, In addition, the DRO enhances the machinist's productivity.
With the Servo II control system used for the retrofit, one-of-a-kind or production run parts can be machined, and the table can be moved either using the pendant or handwheels. The "taught" programs are limited to straight line and angle cuts. The system cannot be taught to machine a circle. Subroutines can be called up, and program steps can be changed, added or inserted. It's easy to delete entire programs from pendant memory, or delete a subroutine call--which is useful when "programming" on the fly. An operator also can set, clear or drag axes travel limits (for example, reset limit beyond current position) and can playback a program held in the pendant's memory.
The Servo II control system can be made more productive by hooking up a PC, which simply can be used to transfer programs between the PC and the pendant; with Servo CNC software and a dedicated PC, the machine has full CNC capabilities. This comprises the second step in the gradual conversion to CNC machining. Programs "written" on the pendant can be transferred to the PC for storage and for re-use at a later time. The transferred pendant programs arc converted to common CNC codes. Conversely, programs can be written and edited on the PC and transferred later to the pendant, though only a limited set of CNC codes are available. This means two things: Operators can generate CNC code without knowing programming, and they can execute previously written CNC code without using the control (it's done via the pendant). Production goes up, and accuracy and repeatability improve. The absence of a steep learning curve makes training the operators brief and inexpensive.
V&G began by doing most of its CNC work using the conversational mode programming on the control. By going through a step-by-step process, the operator answers simple questions about the current job, and the control automatically develops a program, which is then seamlessly translated into G-code that can be used on any Servo CNC machine. Even if the operator makes a mistake in the programming, he or she can easily edit the specific line that needs correction
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