Challenges

"We do not know how cost-effective the renewal of the old machines will be. Also, we would like to hear manufacture’s opinion how to produce a wide variety of products efficiently. ”

⚡Points of the problem faced by the customer⚡

[1] The customer was considering replacing old equipment, but did not know how much a new machine would improve the productivity.

[2] They wanted to consolidate the production of multiple products within one machine, but they were concerned whether appropriate tool quantity and layout could be achieved.

[3] Since the work piece material is copper which causes cutting chips evacuation issue, they were not sure whether stable automated production could be performed.

Solutions

💡What we can do for the customer💡

Muratec's flexible twin gantry loader has been employed to allow a single machine to produce two types of workpieces.

The flexible tooling system that supports a wide variety of products has dramatically reduced man-hours of tool setup for individual workpieces!

Also, our oscillating cutting mechanism has greatly improved chip disposal, which was a bottleneck in automation.

These technologies have realized a reliable production system that can perform automated operations stably and consistently.

Our proposals to solve the customer’s problems are as follows.

📝Proposals

• The customer was considering replacing old equipment and wanted to save the capital investment as much as possible.

Therefore, we proposed Muratec's general-purpose stockers and twin gantry loader in order to consolidate multiple part numbers into one unit of machine.

The machine is designed to enable different workpieces to be set in the left and right stockers, and twin gantry loaders are assigned to the both stockers, respectively, making it possible to easily process multiple types of products simply by changing the spindle chuck jigs.

• For the previous production of multiple products, the frequent changeover forced the customer to stop the machines for as much as two hours during the daily operations.

This two-hour setup change time has been dramatically reduced by adopting our flexible tooling system that does not require changeover, so that the equipment operating rate has been improved by about 5%.

• With regard to chip evacuation, which had been a pain in the neck until then, we have realized a system utilizing the oscillating cutting mechanism that allows for many-hour operations while improving chip entanglement with tools and workpieces.

Click here for the oscillating cutting ▶https://youtu.be/abF4d5KaOkU

Effects after introduction

✨Higher Productivity

• By consolidating the production of multiple products within a single machine, the productivity per machine has been increased.

Moreover, the capital investment has been minimized by reducing the number of necessary machines from initially planned two units of twin-spindle turning machines to one unit.

• The reduced tool setup change time has resulted in longer machining operations and productivity improvement.

• The oscillating cutting method has solved the long-standing problem of chip evacuation.

Thus, Muratec proposes the optimum automation support system, including not only the transfer devices but also the processing method that suits individual customers.