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Showing 161 – 170 of 300 resultsManagers that wind up working in companies that use CNCs often start their careers in other areas. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, managers with limited shop experience can’t always understand what’s actually going on in the shop. Here are five frustration-causing miscues I’ve noticed between management and shop employees.
People in need of information cannot be very productive. A company library can be a good source for general information.
The goal is to get as close to achieving zero setup time as possible while justifying the costs of doing so. Here’s how you get there.
Various control panel functions can lead to potential tool crashes. Look out for these three.
In February 2007, I wrote a column called “Trial Machining on a Sliding Headstock Turning Center” that addressed the complexity of running a good first workpiece on a sliding headstock lathe.
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.
Instead of expensive tool life management systems, try using a custom macro.
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.