CASE STUDY
Thinking outside
the Box
At Jaybee, we are continuously looking for ways to improve the manufacturing process. This approach can lead to improved flow for your organisation and lower component costs.
Producing traditionally milled parts on a lathe. This example was manufactured from a round bar of stainless steel, saving time and money.
It is the suppliers role to help facilitate cost improvements while keeping it in line with our ISO 9001 Quality Management certified by the BSI under certificate number FM38179. When the customer came to us to find ways to reduce costs and increase the speed of the manufacturing process, we had to rethink the processes.
When we were first asked to produce this component from 300 series stainless steel, the conventional way was to cut billets from square section and machine on a vertical machining center.
These were the operations involved:
- Profile drill and face
- Face and thread mill
- Drill and tap M4 holes
- Drill two 5mm holes and profile mill the cam section
- Mill key way profile and drill and tap M6
- Mill slot through cam profile on a horizontal mill
Jaybee approached the manufacturing process with cost improvement and manufacturing speed in mind. We wanted the customer to experience a service that was tailored to their business needs.
Although this was a essentially a milled component we decided to move the part over to a Mill / Turn machine with second operation capability in a single cycle This would allow the different machining operations around the component spindle indexing (C Axis) to be performed in a single cycle.
We changed the material to round bar that could be fed automatically from our CNC bar feeder, and machined a special collet to allow us to part off and pick up the part in the second spindle. The machine we chose had 2 turrets and 2 spindles allowing simultaneous machining.
The resulting change enabled us to machine the part complete on a single machine and allow manufacture unmanned at night to bring the cost down further.
Jaybee has machines that have 10 axis machining capabilities why not send us your drawing today to see if we can reduce your component cost.