Automated Manufacturing and Interval Inspection

* What is "good tooling that would last all day before chipping or breaking"?

We used tooling that lasted more than a day and was actually REALLY good tooling made by an industry leader in that sector. DM me for more details.

* What are some details on "We've been mostly successful but not fully automate"?

This wasn't an easy task for us, but thankfully we got to a place where we called it a "success" though I know that means different things to different people.

* What do you mean by this, does the robot not load parts on the CMM? "We never got to the phase where the robot would load and unload any CMM like the whole industry 4.0 cycle. Its a a bummer for me because I was interested in learning that side of automation."

Our robot loads/unloads parts to a number of different stations all day long/night... the only time humans enter the equation is when parts are finished and are pulled from stock/storage locations.

* We struggled to figure out our inspection intervals in the beginning but then settled on having different intervals for each part as no part was the same. "What was done was they basically stop inspecting every part and started checking every 5 parts or whatever interval."

* I came to find out from word to mouth that it is more common than I initially thought and that most folks don't go around talking much about it. "Is this level of automation and inspection something common or is this still considered "new" way of doing things? Should I be doing random full inspection audits?"

Some background.
I landed a gig where the CMM was part of an automations cell. Due to reasons I won't disclose here I got the opportunity to 'learn' the entire cell while I wasn't doing CMM things. I learned it all and eventually left the company to pursue a career in control automation. I've been doing it for about a couple years and can finally say I can build you a fully autonomous CNC tending cell (with some help of a small team of course as I'm not ME, EE, etc.).

DM me and we can chat in more detail about this topic if you're interested.

What is up Kp61dude! Good tooling as in it will last the entire shift or longer without having to be replaced by a human.

Not fully automated as in the humans still have to change inserts and tooling and make adjustments on first articles before hitting go on the robot. This may take a few hours or more depending on the setup and how many inserts to replace. Oddly enough these CNC machines don't have tool magazine so there is no room for redundant tooling.

So the robot will load raw material and unload a finished part and put it on a cart. Then a human would grab the part and inspect it on the CMM. As I pushed to get the CMM integraded into the cell for more automation, I was told we didn't need to because the plan was to run a sample from the get go and save money by not integrating the CMM. Then the owner purchases a new CNC machine with robot and asked me about getting a CMM for it. I got a quote from Hexagon for a Tigo with their automation controller and we were going to interface a doosan robot with the Tigo to check parts. It was going to be amazing and a first. BUT my coworker who was going to program the doosan CNC was like the machine is brand new and its going to be unbelievably repeatable and accurate. We don't even need a CMM there so the company owner killed the CMM purchase. It took outside CNC program help 4 months to get the machine up and running. AND they had to walk to another machining center to use their CMM to check every part because it was so unreliable. Talk about saving money.

We just picked a number for the inspection frequency and figured out what we needed to do to achieve it and then what could be done to make that number bigger. In one cell we are checking the first and last part only per shift. This is also part number dependent.

Is it common to not inspect all your parts it which first proving reliability using a CMM or QC for that matter before jumping into not checking parts? I've never done any gage r&r or stat or anything like that.

I am the only CMM programmer with 8 Hexagon CMMs and 5 Renishaw Equators. Most just run 1 part number so they were ideal for robot machine tending and CMM tending but like I said. They figured they could save time by not checking every part and money by not integrating the CMM.

I guess if machinists made parts right the first time, we'd all be out of a job.

If you have to have 100% inspection, then you really shouldn't have the CNC run parts faster than your CMM. Parts will stack up waiting for the CMM. If the parts are waiting for the CMM to catch up then a lot of scrap could be produced before the problem gets detected. If the inspection results can be instantly transferred to a SPC program then you reduce the number of parts inspected while still keeping a good eye on the machining process. When the SPC program flags an issue then you would only need to recheck however many parts were skipped. The SPC program needs to be able to scream an alarm all over the facility, because operators will want to just keep loading parts.

kingsld1Yes, another phase of using the robot to tend the CMM was automatically offset to the CNC and flagging multiple people in the even of a out of tolerance part.

Using a SPC program should alert you before you produce an out of tolerance part. Lots of training involved in many different functions and lots of resistance to stopping the machine before a bad part is made.

Yes correction, alert multiple people when a part is almost out of tolerance.

Industry 4.0 is overrated. You can't take the skill out of manufacturing. Just like 3D printing. Will never match the speed & efficiency of good old fashioned CNC machine tool.

MattR I like how you say good old fashioned CNC, when I started out as an apprentice NC was the new fangled way and CNC was a couple of years off arriving on our shop floor

Shouldn't 3D printing be compared to casting manufacturing instead of CNC?

The reason for my question is that 3D printing adds material and CNC removes material. Isn't it normally faster to remove material than to add material.