Automation Cell Outperforms CNC Machines Fourfold

Evan Jones founded 3^rd Gen Machine in 2007, with one customer, a handful of employees and a few hand-me-down machines from his father’s mom-and-pop shop. Fifteen years later, his shop is nearly bursting out the doors of its Logan, Utah, location. While open to all sorts of work, 3^rd Gen Machine has found a niche using its horizontal machining centers to manufacture 6061 and 7075 aluminum parts for the firearm and outdoor recreation equipment industries.

Recently, however, 3^rd Gen Machine’s tried-and-true process started proving not-so-true. Chip imprint scratches created too much scrap and manual machine loading swallowed too much time. These problems came to a head with a spindle crash.

“That day, we sent a purchase order to Methods for the automation system,” Jones says.

Time for Turnkey

Jones is referring to Methods Machine Tools’ JobShop Cell, which includes two FANUC RoboDrills and an articulating FANUC LR Mate 200iD robot. The RoboDrills are short-bed, vertical machines, and the whole cell occupies only slightly more floor space than one of Jones’ existing HMCs. For 3^rd Gen Machine’s first JobShop Cell, Jones asked Methods to program a function into the robot’s teach pendant that would enable switching between part programs with a single value adjustment — an especially valuable capability for a client order with nine different part types that arrived just before 3^rd Gen bought the automation cell.

The JobShop Cell ended up being four times as productive as any of 3^rd Gen Machine’s other machining centers.

Originally, Methods estimated a cycle time of 1 to 2 minutes for a simple part, with another 15 to 20 seconds for part changes. Jones had been impressed with this estimation, which would have been down from an average of two minutes for the same part using the shop’s HMCs. He was still unsure about the viability of setting up only two parts at a time (one per spindle) rather than the full pallets of 3^rd Gen Machine’s HMCs, but the downtime reductions stemming from the robot-automated part loading made up for it. Further part program optimizations lowered machining time to between 45 seconds and 1.5 minutes, and the JobShop Cell ended up being four times as productive as any of 3^rd Gen Machine’s other machining centers.

The JobShop Cell also enabled lights-out machining — or, as close to it as an already 24-hour operation can get. 3^rd Gen Machine’s machinists run multiple machines simultaneously, so the automation cell’s ability to run unattended for hours at a time eases the strain on the machinists even as it improves the shop’s productivity. Jones quickly bought a second JobShop Cell to take advantage of this productivity.

Chip Maintenance

Adopting the JobShop Cells wasn’t completely free of adjustments, however. Jones found that chips coming off the parts in the RoboDrills could land on the robot’s sensors, making the robot think it was engaged with a part instead of performing offline prep work.

3^rd Gen Machine engineered some components as a stopgap to clean off the sensors until Methods could install additional air ports on the robot.

Programming the Future

Methods may have performed the initial set up for the FANUC LR Mate 200iD in 3^rd Gen Machine’s JobShop Cell, but the shop is not content to rest there. 3^rd Gen Machine programs its parts into the JobShop Cells, and actively works to improve them — as demonstrated by the 25% optimization in cycle times for simple parts mentioned earlier. Moreover, Jones and a few of his machinists are taking robotics programming courses to fine-tune the robot and prove the Cell as they see fit.

The extra productivity of these machines has made 3^rd Gen Machine a tidy profit, and Jones is using that capacity to expand with a new building. Until the building is finished, however, 3^rd Gen’s largest problem might be that the JobShop Cell is too productive — the company has needed to purchase shipping containers so it has the space to stage finished goods from its other machines.