When it comes to mass production,  you know who to talk to! PBS Machine Tools have been supplying solutions to our customers, keeping them price and quality competitive even with tough overseas competitors.

We have a complete knowledge of what is required and expected in the mass production environment, and are equipped to offer our customers, not only equipment but also effective solutions to make sure the product gets out the door in the desired time and at a competitive price.

             

Flexible Manufacturing Systems, incorporating forms of Robotics, Fixturing and Automation, are becoming more prevalent due to many customers’ individual and unique needs. For the majority such seemingly complex and intricate processes of automation and robotics are unnecessary, but for those who do require them and rely on them for their high production loads and part requirements, the benefits are easily visible.  

Minimizing production costs in short runs is essentially a logistical issue and goes hand in hand with materials handling as, quite simply, the fewer times a part is handled by a person the greater its value becomes. This is due to the time saving that can accrue from having it handled only once and having a guarantee that a part will come off accurate and without fault. Faults and inaccuracies create waste, which further increase the production cost and directly impact on the bottom line.

Traditionally markets have been centered on the Products, placing and promoting them in the most convenient way so that the customer is able to access them, not only providing products where and when the customer requires them, but more importantly, focusing and designing their production around these unique requirements. This conventional wisdom is changing so that the supplier can become more focused. The growing trend in the market is developing towards shorter production runs thus keeping spindles available, therefore quick changeovers need to be a reality and not a wish.

There are several ways available to accommodate these highly differing and unique requirements, all of which require obtaining as much information as possible about the process in order to supply the customer with the appropriate solution.

For Tong-Tai Machine & Tool Co the first step in this process is having a design department of more than 60 engineers giving capacity to design production systems around customer’s requirements. This creates an environment in which any application can be successfully planned and ideas implemented and tested before the customer goes directly into production.

Tong-Tai Machine & Tool Co. have a large variety of machines which are easily adaptable within the production environment of the customer, these include Vertical and Horizontal Machining Centers, Vertical and Horizontal CNC Lathes, Inverted Vertical lathes Special Purpose Machines and Automated Production Lines. Standard CNC machines including machining centres and lathes can easily evolve into production cells.

With machining centres, by making use of Auto Pallet Changers the user is able to plan and change his production as and when it suits him. Having up to four Pallets on vertical machining centres, or even 8 or more pallets on Horizontal Machining Centres, enough flexibility is supplied to enable the end-user to halve his setup time as well as being able to run different parts on one machine simultaneously if required.

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CNC lathes also fall into these categories. Machines such as the Tong-Tai model TGL series have self loading and unloading functions. The purpose of these is to have easy, efficient and individual setups. To maximize the cost efficiency of short cycle turning, loading cycles must be kept to a minimum. By making use of external loading stations, the operator is able to load and unload many pieces at once form a station. Whixh doesn’t affect the machines production time. The TOPPER inverted vertical lathe had an inverted spindle which acts as its own “robot” and collect and off loads parts with any operator assistance. Machined parts can be loaded and unloaded without the need for any human interface thereby reducing the excess time spent on setup and completed part retrieval.

Another consideration as to what is or isn’t automation is that of double spindle lathes. Which perform their own handover operation, thus acting as a loading station within the machine tool. Using this method ensures the customers parts come off complete and is a much simpler method that say a Robot. Thus increasing efficiency of manufacturing and keeping the customer cost per component competitive.

Similarly, using a robot between machines in a production line will reduce loading and unloading time.  With a robot having two grippers on one arm, the un-machined part is collected by the robot from a central loading/unloading area. After removing the machined part to be transferred to the next operation, the robot loads the vacant spindle of the first operation with a new part to be machined.  At the second lathe, the robot removes the completed part and loads the unfinished part, thereafter returning to the central area to auto-measure, offload and retrieve the next part ready for machining.

It is also important to first consider the merits of automation in the manufacturing environment before applying any sort of robots etc. a recent example at a customer, “we found loading with a robot to be a great help, especially considering how short the cycle time was for the customers’ workpiece. Also, for an operator to load a small odd shaped forging in merely a few seconds was nearly impossible. This isn’t always the case however and each product and production plan should be examined and planned on its merits as to the best and most efficient method of loading and unloading the part.

Machine Tool Builders and their Consultants need to explore the use of such systems to better increase and maintain their customer’s production demands and, in order to meet the needs of the customer, they need to have available resources and techniques that enable them to accommodate such requests.