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Company
Industry: Mechanical Power Transmission Parts
Process: Multi-Function Lathe (Lathe-Turn)
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Company Background
Weasler Engineering has been a long time customer of Ellison Technologies. Ellison Technologies and Weasler Engineering have partnered together for over 15 years to revolutionize the processing of their parts. In the early 90’s Ellison Technologies implemented use of index chucks on two-axis lathes which allowed Weasler to manufacture many part features in a single chucking. It improved quality and reduced WIP.
In 2003, Ellison Technologies once again worked with Weasler Engineering to help revolutionize part processing in their plant.
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Challenge
Weasler Engineering has many short-run jobs. Conventional processing through the Weasler Engineering plant included moving parts to several workstations for each of the various operations. This movement of parts caused lost inventory, scrap, and longer lead times.
Weasler Engineering was aware of other technologies but didn’t know how much this could improve their operations. Whatever they purchased they wanted to achieve the following goals.
Reduce Set-Up Time
Reduce WIP
Reduce Scrap
Reduce Product Lead Time
Improve Overall Product Quality
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Assessment
Don Baird, Ellison Technologies VP of Engineered Solutions, had long suggested to the customer that a Multi-Function lathe could achieve many of the goals Weasler Engineering wanted to achieve.
It was known that many of the current parts had several operations and that the combination of these operations sometimes meant up to a week lead time to ship a part from start to finish. It was also known that during this production process a scrap rate was higher than desired because of the multiple set-ups and lost WIP.
Although we knew that we could produce a part in a single operation, we couldn’t know how well the Multi-Function Lathe would improve the production process without test cuts.
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Solution
Ellison Technologies used a Multi-Function Lathe to produce spindle yokes, clutch yokes, and clutch hubs.
In all cases a raw casting or slug or bar stock was loaded in the left hand spindle and when the part was ejected into the parts catcher from the right hand spindle it was complete.
The upper turret on the Multi-Function Lathe had a full B-Axis capability and large travel in the Y-axis. This was key to the milling of the “dog bone” feature. This milling required a heavy cut with a Y-axis move that was greater than most live tool lathes of this size can achieve.
The ability to transfer parts between spindles while maintaining orientation was also critical since the milled features in the RH spindle must be located within a couple thousandths of the milled features done on the RH spindle. Prior to transfer between spindles this orientation was only possible through special fixtures on machining centers.
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End Result
Implementation of the Multi-Function Lathe produced the following improvements
Reduced the number operations from four to one.
The reduced number of operations saved 60% on overall set-up time and cut the scrap rate for each part to near zero.
Reduced the WIP and the related inventory costs.
Reduced the part processing time from 4 days across 4 machines, to 14 minutes on the Multi-Function Lathe. This gave the customer greater flexibility to engage in lean manufacturing practices and react to emergency situations.
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