The more often as task is repeated, the easier it is to justify improving it. If you seldom perform a task, it doesn’t make sense to target it for improvement. However, often-repeated tasks may comprise the greatest percentage of your time, so improving them can have a large and immediate impact on productivity.
CNC machine productivity is directly tied to the people who program, set up and run the machines. It also depends on support people, such as tool engineers, manufacturing engineers, tooling engineers, quality/inspection people and tool crib attendants. Everyone in the CNC environment has an impact on productivity.
CNC machine operation panels have many buttons and switches that setup people and operators must know well. While managers need not know every button and switch, there are some control panel functions that they should know in order to judge whether important functions are set appropriately.
CNC lathes with live tooling capabilities can perform machining operations similar to those done on milling machines and eliminate secondary operations.
If you have jobs that are repeated on a given CNC machine, you probably want to ensure that they can be run over and over again without machine downtime. Indeed, you probably want to consider your programs as “proven” to be secure in the notion that you can consistently run them at any time without problems.
Almost all CNC shops provide documentation to tell setup people and operators how to make setups and complete production runs. Each shop varies with regard to how this is handled and how specific the documentation is.
Many companies that use CNC seem to struggle on a daily basis with programs that have been successfully run in the past. There is no guarantee that it will run flawlessly in the future.
Almost all CNC users take advantage of control-based canned cycles. Even CAM systems commonly output G-code programs that contain canned cycle commands. This includes hole machining canned cycles, such as drilling, tapping, boring and more, and whatever milling cycles the machine may have. For turning centers, it includes roughing and finishing multiple repetitive cycles.
Five-axis machines are complex, and machinists need to be skilled to work with them. However, the machine’s application is really what drives its complexity.
Several lessons can be learned about efficient CNC machine tool usage from auto racing teams. Many shop people are racing fans, so the lessons should be pretty easy to drive home—even for newcomers to the shop environment.