Rodmatic takes the fast track
By admin at 1 August, 2009, 9:43 am
With the market conditions driving down the batch sizes Reading based Rodmatic Hytek has developed fast-track machine changeover techniques for an automotive project.
Said managing director Brian Steatham: “We won this contract about a year ago which involved the production of 30 variants of piston rods in batches of up to 250 parts. Since then the number of types have grown by a third but lately certain batch sizes have dropped to as small as seven parts to meet prototype requirements. This change in supply, with growing demands on production for our CNC sliding head lathes from other customers, would have given us concern over scheduling, stock holding versus pricing and lost production due to the increased frequency of changeover and setting demands.”
Mr Steatham decided to call in an application engineer from the sliding head machine supplier Star Micronics GB to carefully look at all the processes on the nine-axis Star SV-32 and seven-axis SR-20 RIII machines. While minor operational changes were made, more important was the setting up of macro programming based on length/diameter ratios for the 40 different part variants.
The suspension rods are produced from chrome steel and range up to 16 mm diameter by 280 mm long. Each part has to be turned, threaded at each end and have flats milled in a single operational cycle. Already, Rodmatic had developed the process using form tools alongside single point turning and cut original cycle times by almost 30 percent. This development enabled output targets to be achieved that were double what could be produced on two recently installed fixed head lathes.
Said Mr Steatham: “We can now maximise the productivity from the 4m barfeed and change over within a few minutes. It has also enabled us to improve our minimal manned production between shifts and at night and respond to our customer within 24 hours when needed. As a result, we have worked closely with the customer to fast track prototypes and specials causing minimum disruption to our normal production schedules.”
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