A fundamental change to the way stainless steel pump bodies are machined by subcontractor Metaltech Precision Engineers is resulting in far-reaching benefits.
They include a drastic reduction in set-up time that lowers economical batch size by a factor of four, shorter lead-times, faster cycles, savings in the cost of tooling and less wear on the machine tool.
Additional advantages of the new production route are reductions in power consumption and in space taken up on the shop floor. Both are in short supply at the firm’s Hailsham factory and were the main drivers of the company’s desire to find an alternative manufacturing process.
Expensive, 500 mm or 630 mm twin-pallet, 50-taper horizontal machining centres (HMCs) with box ways and high spindle torque, of which there are nine on site, together with CNC lathes have underpinned pump body production since the company was established in 1976. The components are typically produced in five operations on three machines.
A 40-taper, 5-axis, vertical-spindle machining centre, a German-built Spinner U-620 without a pallet changer supplied as a turnkey package by sole UK agent Whitehouse Machine Tools, now machines the components in two operations. Installed and operational within one week during November 2019, the cell heralds a progression at Metaltech from the use of raw power to smart machining methodology.
The pump bodies in question, of which there are eight types ranging in diameter from 160 to 280 mm with numerous different port details, are produced for a customer in batches of 50 to 60 to a monthly schedule that might include as many as 15 component variants. Sometimes orders were impossible to fulfil and discussions had to take place regarding alterations to the schedule.
Read more: 5-AXIS MACHINING CENTRE PRODUCES PUMP COMPONENTS IN TWO OPERATIONS INSTEAD OF FIVE