part of article in Cutting Tool Engineering

this is a sidebar to an article in Cutting Tool Engineering Magazine. they interviewed me for this piece :

Sidebar 1

 Minimize Handling, Maximize Competitiveness

Triangle Precision Industries, Dayton, Ohio, handles prototype and short-run production of parts industries including medical, aerospace, automotive, firearms and printing equipment.

CNC coordinator Tim Friedmann said the prototype work generally involves making the first 50 - 100 pieces of part for testing purposes, after which the customer passes production work to a shop that focuses on high-volume machining. Triangle Precision’ s array of equipment includes four Hurco mills with trunnion tables for five-sided machining. Although the machines are capable of simultaneous five-axis machining, Friedmann said he has yet to come across a part that he couldn’ t simply position and 3-D contour with ballnose endmills.

The complexity associated with simultaneous 5-axis machining “ scares people away” from using the five-sided method, he said, in which “ you just position and cut. It makes every operation just one operation. Your handling time is none, your setup time obviously is eliminated. Your blends are all perfect because you control them all in the same operation, and your chance to scrap the part because you are taking it off the machine and putting it back on every time you change a side is eliminated. I took parts that were seven operations — we had to handle the part six or seven times—and made them in two operations, and eliminated all the problems of getting each operation to blend in with the last or next operation.” The setup time and labor savings resulting from using five-sided strategies are critical, considering the short run, frequent-changeover nature of Triangle Precision’ s work.

  Friedmann actually performs six-sided machining in the machines; “ I have trunnion that sits sideways in the Y-axis so that half my table is open. I’ ll put a couple vises on the table to do a second operation on the parts as they come off the trunnion. I do five sides of the part, take it off, load it into the vise, then perform the second operation the side that has the least amount of work on it.”

To further boost throughput, Friedmann builds his own fixturing and mounts it on quick-change plates that are part of a referencing system from System 3R. “ We have 3R chucks with pull studs you mount to your fixture plate, and it holds like a toolholder holds up in a spindle,” he said. Changeover involves releasing the pull stud, removing the plate, and replacing it with another. “ So my switchover time becomes next to nothing; it’ s basically tool changing when I use those setups,” he said Regarding five-sided machining, Friedmann said, “ When we started on doing this five years ago, it was like, “ why isn’ t everybody doing this? It makes everything so easy. If you aren’ t doing this you are going to be left behind. You can’ t compete with me when I handle the part twice and you handle it five times. There’ s just no way around it.”