PM Blog
A Baker’s Dozen Of OSHA Moneymakers
The safety of our employees, precision and quality workmanship have always been guiding principles in the precision machining industry. What are the areas that we need to focus on for continuous improvement? Here is a baker’s dozen table of what the OSHA inspectors cited in our industry (SIC 3451; NAICS 332721 Precision Turned Products Manufacturing) for the last fiscal year (October 2005-September 2006). This data was current as of October 13, 2006.
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Riding Out The Storms
After a machine setback in this shop, management got in touch with Ganesh Machinery Inc. (Chatsworth, California). This company offered a selection of machines that seemed to fit well with the needs of G&L, so the two companies worked out a deal on a multitask lathe with bar feeder—the model GH-25M.
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Planning For A Promising New Year
We asked the principals from eight successful shops about what they see for business in 2007. Here is what they had to say.
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Want to turn all those quotes into new business?--Come to PMPA Management Update ‘07
Are you satisfied with your company’s success in converting quotes to orders? Do you feel that you are getting a fair return on your investment in the quoting process? I frequently hear CEOs and sales managers complain about the amount of quotes that never seem to generate new orders. After working endlessly to respond to piles of quotes and prepare in-depth proposals, the hit rate on incoming orders is quite disappointing.
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Selecting Brushes For Burrs
Deburring is often a practical necessity after cutoff operations. Wire brush systems provide a low-cost and reliable means of automatic deburring of barstock or tube stock.
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Tool Life Means Spindle Utilization
It is this goal of keeping the machines running that Schwanog LLC (Elgin, Illinois) has set its sites on helping its customers accomplish. Since modifying its direction about 18 years ago to specialize in indexable form tools, the company has been increasing tool life and providing fast turnaround to help shops reduce machine downtime.
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Corporate Support Maximizes Students’ Experience
An example of a positive technical school/corporate relationship is that of the Ferris State University (FSU) Manufacturing Tooling Technology program (Big Rapids, Michigan) and Hurco Companies, Inc. (Indianapolis, Indiana).
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Secondary Operations Become Primary
As a way to reduce production times, shops often look to bring secondary operations to the primary multi-spindle operation. Such a shift can help reduce errors from part location and keep the expense of damaged parts to a minimum.
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Sticker Shock Relief For The CNC Multi-Spindle
To bridge the gap between traditional multi-spindle technology and full CNC, Index Corporation (Noblesville, Indiana) has developed the MS22C, a six-spindle CNC multi for the medium-complex workpiece market, which has been dominated by the cam-controlled multi-spindle automatics and simple sliding and fixed headstock automatics.
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Postprocessors: An Integral Part Of Machine Tools
Without a good postprocessor, many machine tools are underutilized. It takes a well-matched post to access the full potential built into a machine.
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Member Profile: Fordsell Machine Products Co.
In 2006, Fordsell Machine Products Co. reached a business milestone. The job shop manufacturer of precision-turned parts celebrated its 60th anniversary. Fordsell opened its doors in 1946 in Warren, Michigan, by Bill Sellheim and Gwayne Ford. In 1984, Michael Redfield, who had prior experience as a general manager at another screw machine company, purchased Fordsell. His main focus for the company was to use Brown & Sharpe as well as Index cam machines to generate business. In 1998, Redfield’s son, David, took over the company and is the current president of Fordsell.
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Volumetric Measurement For Practical Positioning Accuracy
Using a conventional laser interferometer to measure the straightness and squareness errors can be difficult and costly. The process can require days of machine downtime, even with an experienced operator performing the measurements. To address the need for faster, more accurate machine calibration, Optodyne, Inc. (Compton, California) has developed a laser vector measurement technique for the 3D volumetric positioning error measurement.
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