Rusty Arant of North Carolina’s Northeast Tool is a true believer in applying the latest manufacturing technologies to keep his family business competitive. That includes adding a robotic automation system designed by Gosiger Automation that dramatically reduces time and cost-per-part. You can read the full case study elsewhere on the Gosiger Web site.
In the recent national elections much was made of the loss of American manufacturing jobs (7 million since the peak employment year of 1979). Most politicians place the blame squarely on unfair trade policies and lower offshore labor costs. Although these certainly were contributing factors, according to the Department of Commerce, the reality is this: Despite employing fewer workers, manufacturing output in the U.S. has actually doubled since 1979 to an adjusted-for-inflation $1.91 trillion in 2015.
The battle to reduce production costs, improve product quality, and satisfy customer demands is fought daily in the world of CNC manufacturing. One of the most effective strategies facilities of all sizes can employ is robotic automation – whether for a single production cell or an entire factory.
There's no doubt that applying robotic automation to part production provides a number of benefits including reduced cost-per-part, better use of machine operator time, increased CNC machine utilization, improved part quality and consistent daily output.
You can download two, free white papers prepared by Gosiger Automation by visiting our resources page, www.gosiger.com/resources
Robotic-based CNC machine tool automation is proven to reduce operator time and cost-per-part. It also enables unattended and lights-out operation, eliminates human error and improves spindle utilization. All of which greatly enhances productivity. For more on this topic, download the free white paper The Case For Robotic-Based Automation.
It seems like the pressure on manufacturers just keeps building. The competition is coming at you from down the street, around the corner and across the water. Costs for qualified operators (if you can find them), health care, materials and energy keep rising, while customers demand higher quality, lower prices and faster delivery.
Many energy providers are turning to the process of well fracturing which is good news for CNC shops like Premium Frac Pumps in Fort Worth, Texas. The company makes a line of well fracturing pumps that are critical to this process.
Bill Goodman, President of Inland Tool & Manufacturing, Inc., saw little opportunity to benefit from factory automation. “Along with our production stamping and light assembly businesses, we produce individual prototypes and tooling, or small batches of parts in our machining operations,” he explains, “So automation really hasn’t been much of an issue.”
Things changed, however, when Inland began making production runs of a family of parts for heavy-duty cable clamps used on slings attached to derricks for loading and unloading freight, and in the lumber industry. That’s when they decided to investigate how applying factory automation to this repetitive process might save them time and reduce labor costs. They chose an Okuma Captain L-370MWBB CNC lathe as the centerpiece and worked with Gosiger Factory Automation to create a cell that integrated an LNS Quick Load Servo 80 bar feeder, inbound and outbound parts conveyors, and a Fanuc M-6iB/6S robot to handle parts.
McConnelsburg PA-based Fulton Precision Industries, Inc. makes transmission shafts for Caterpillar and rock drill bits for Atlas Copco. The 94 separate Caterpillar parts range in diameter from 2” to 5.5” and in length from 27” to 42”, with individual shafts weighing up to 235 pounds. Lot sizes are relatively small, and each shaft has complex geometry that must be machined to tolerances of +/- .0007 of an inch.
According to Fulton’s President, Walt Barmont: “When we considered adding two new L 470 Okuma CNC lathes to our shop, Gosiger Factory Automation proposed automating our process by adding a Fanuc 165F robot to load and unload parts. Gosiger Factory Automation worked with us to make sure the system would not only increase productivity, but would deliver the accuracy and repeatability we require.”