Erik Anderson, president and CEO of Basin Precision Machining LLC, has determined that setups are the root of all evil when it comes to manufacturing productivity. They cause part variations, downtime, and high-percentage scrap rates.
Drilling advancements have spurred the evolution of oil and gas operations from simplistic single-well pad fields to more complex multi-well pads. Today, many producers are using fracking and lateral drilling techniques to place 10 or more wells on one pad.
I just returned from IMTS in Chicago and my first thought was, “where will I be able to rack up all those bonus steps I got last week?” On the easiest day, I walked 7.9 miles, and I topped 10 miles on two other days. It’s easy to understand why.
In a perfect CNC world, the first part is always a good one. There’s no need for extra blanks or barstock. Setup times are only as long as is needed to swap out a few tools and load a new program. There’s never a crash, never the need to reprogram an inefficient bit of code. The operator just pushes the green button and out pops a finished workpiece minutes or hours later.
In Donald, Ore., 24 miles south of Portland, GK Machine Company Inc., is manufacturing parts for heavy agricultural equipment such as harvesters, sprayers, tree diggers, and hose reels.
Five-axis machining, once a novel and somewhat forbidding technology, has become routine in many shops. Meanwhile, some organizations are still hesitant to use it, largely due to programming concerns.
Fastems is delivering two Automated Structure Laser Cleaner (AutoSLC) units for the F-35 Lightning II Wing Line.
In August, Rob Sullivan had an installation scheduled for two of his autonomous mobile robots at the Deutsche Post DHL Group’s Innovation Center in Troisdorf, Germany.
Low-carbon and medium-carbon steels form the backbone of virtually every shop’s operations in their general engineering applications and fabricated parts.
In competitiveness studies for economic development projects, a strong workforce is always one of the leading factors for a project win. A talented workforce is also necessary when a company is evaluating expansion opportunities.