Page 2 - Hemlock achieve 10 minute changeover for parts with the Feedio from Whitehouse Machine Tools

HEMLOCK ENGINEERING
CASE STUDY
“On this basis, overall production output is about five times that of one of our 40-taper machines. Additionally, the latter capacity needs the full-time attendance of an operator whereas the Brother cell occupies an operator for only about 20 percent of the person’s time. So there is a five-fold reduction in the labour cost content of components produced.”
He explained that the plug-and- play Speedio / Feedio cell costs about £800 per week to run including finance, labour and power, which he said “is not very much”. It arrived on the shop floor in March 2022 and, as already observed, produces similar output to five 40-taper machines with full-time operators. That is why Mr Cobb describes the benefits of his first ever automated prismatic component production cell as “absolutely astronomical” and “off the charts”.
What makes automation feasible for small batches of relatively uncomplicated components
requiring short cycle times is rapid cell changeover within two hours, including swapping the cutting program and tools. It is largely down to Brother’s easy-to-use ChipLite conversational software that controls the handling robot and camera vision system.
All that is needed is to key in via
a touchscreen GUI the size of the new raw billet, the spacing on
the conveyors and the gripper finger data. Connection of the robot program, generated by
the dedicated on-board PC, to
the VMC control system is via a Profibus link. Mr Cobb asserts
that changing over a conventional robot-loaded machining centre and reprogramming it would take days rather than hours.
There are other makes of 5-axis VMC in the Stapleford factory, all 40-taper models. The Brother M200X3, with its 300 x 440 x 305 mm working volume and 16,000 rpm face-and-taper contact spindle, is the first 30-taper 5-axis machine on-site, the other eight Speedios being 4-axis models with a rotary indexer.
The effect of having an additional CNC axis on the M200X3 and
using the machine in 3+2 or 4+1 positional mode is to deskill machine operation. It also reduces fixturing costs and balances more closely the machine’s cutting cycles with the time required for performing a second operation manually on another machine to finish the sixth face of components.
What tends to happen in practice in Stapleford is that foreman Rob Sinclair sets up the Speedio / Feedio cell when he arrives on Monday morning. It then runs
for typically two days non-stop, virtually unattended, before it needs to be reset.
It is the inexorability of component loading and unloading without
any stoppages that Mr Cobb says underpins the cell’s very high efficiency and production output.
“The Speedio / Feedio cell costs about £800 per week to run including finance, labour and power, which is not very much”
Paul Cobb, Owner, Hemlock Engineering