Advertising in MoldMaking Technology offers
Issue link: https://mmt.epubxp.com/i/930590
Cutting Tools 14 MoldMaking Technology —— FEBRUARY 2018 By Drew Strauchen Reduce machine idle time with fast, accurate, repeatable, offline cutting tool measurements. Why You Need a Tool Presetter T he greatest expense in any manufac- turing facility is time. Burden rates, combined with overhead machine rates, represent approximately 50 percent of manufacturing costs. This is probably not surprising, but despite this fact, many shops continue to place a disproportion- ate amount of focus on reducing tooling spend. In comparison to burden and over- head machine rates, tooling spend only represents a fraction of the manufacturing cost (4–5 percent). And when facilities do examine time savings, they often place the emphasis on machining cycle times. One frequently overlooked time-killer is that of setup. Setup is defined as the time it takes to get parts loaded and located and tools set with offsets that compensate for variables such as gage length, diameter and runout into the machine control. The old-school method of tool setup involves manually intensive operations, often using a multitude of different tools and methods of varying accuracy to extract desired mea- surements. On average, the time to set one tool using these types of methods is approx- imately five minutes. When shops employ methods such as feelers and test cuts to determine sizes, setting time can be much longer than the average five minutes per tool. If setup moved at the incredible speed of three minutes per tool, the conservative cost to set up five machines over the course of a year is $189,000. If there are more machines, lon- ger setup times, more shifts or more setups per machine in the same scenario, the cost will be significantly higher. This is the breakdown of cost for such a scenario: • Setup time for 20-tool capacity machine = 1 hour (for a three-minute setup) This customizable tool presetter for fully automatic, high-end tool presetting offers a modular concept that makes it possible to preset tools up to 39.37 inches in length and diameter. It also has a second vertical camera for measuring the center of rotation. Images courtesy of Haimer USA. • Setup cost for five machines = $375 (for an average shop rate of $75 per hour) • Shop rate combines average direct labor costs and overhead rates • Setup time per year = 2,520 hours (assuming there are 252 working days per year) • Setup cost per year (at 2 shifts and 1 setup per shift) = $189,000 Some may question why overhead rates are included in the shop-rate calculation, and the answer is opportunity cost. Whether the machine is running or sitting idle, it is costing a company money every minute. Therefore, for that company to VIDEO Access the related video under the Videos tab at MMT online.