Automated Manufacturing and Interval Inspection

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.

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.