Smart Tools
June 29, 2006
Why are we talking about Smart Tools? As you know, in today's competitive manufacturing industry there's
a lot of pressure to reduce scrap rate, to reduce tool cost and maximize the
investment of your capital equipment while reducing labor costs. It seems like
tolerances in parts are getting tighter; and there's pressure to decrease cycle
time and increase tool life.
One of the things I'd like to
show you is how Smart Tools can help really achieve all of these goals. There
are many ways to approach this, but Makino has developed a novel, new method of
utilizing Smart Tools to help achieve these goals. Today we'll be covering why you
should choose Smart Tools, their advantages and why you would want to apply
Smart Tools to some of your machines.
The other thing we'll be covering is just what makes
Smart Tools smart. I'll also be showing you the entire Smart Tool Family; there
are over 30 different Smart Tools, each one unique. We'll discuss why these
advantages can help you to achieve some of your efficiency or productivity
goals. And we'll be looking at programmable through-spindle coolant. A lot of
these tools utilize this coolant pressure as a means of application; they're at
the heart of our system.
Finally, we'll add them all up together to form what we call the single machine, single clamping advantage.
There's a lot of inherent cycle time and production advantages to combining these
tools into certain applications.
Obviously, we look at parts with both cycle times, based on the number of tools, speed rates and rapid
traverse movements. I've got a tool that can do multiple features with the
roughing and finishing. I'm not only saving cycle time and doing tool changes
and additional feedrate moves, but I've also reduced the total number of tools
in the machine and the total number of inserts. There's just an overall benefit
of applying Smart Tools from the cycle time standpoint.
Throughout this presentation, I'll be showing you different ways to synchronize these different tools in a
way that we can literally improve the quality of the part by having known depth
of cuts, known surfaces and predictable machining. A part of that is stabilizing
the machining process and controlling my upstream variables.
When I have complete control over the entire process and over every aspect of the machining, this allows me
to take advantage of some of these features. So what Smart Tools are going to
do is allow us to take these higher broad cuts and stabilize them,
that much more stable than traditional methods. Along with that comes improved
tool life. I'm showing you how I can control the depth of cut and position of
the incoming features extremely accurately, and when I can do is not only save
cycle time but improve tool life by having known, predictable depth of cuts. I'm
not encountering any of the unknowns in the system because I'm controlling the
upstream variables.
I can also eliminate the need for additional equipment. I'll be showing you ways of doing honing and grinding
or line boring where you no longer need special purpose machines for doing that
and, bringing these very unique prophecies to a standard of machining center.
And when I can do that I can reduce the total number of operators as well. I've
eliminated a honing machine and I no longer need a honing operator.
Throughout this presentation I'll be showing you the disadvantage of having operators make minute or subtle
adjustments to tooling. Part of this Smart Tool package is the ability for the
machine itself to make those decisions and to make those adjustments
automatically. That way I have operators loading and unloading parts, not
adjusting tools and introducing unwanted variables into the system.
It's a process
So you're asking yourself, what makes Smart Tools smart? It's much more than just a tool; it's a process.
When we're able to combine a modern machining center with a modern NC control
with a unique Smart Tool and they were coupling that to a feedback loop, in
this instance either diameter or torque feedback. But the real intelligence or
the real smart aspect of this process is the feedback loop.
When I'm able to do some machining and review what I've just done, either from a diameter or a torque
standpoint, then I can feed that information back to the control, score that
variable and compare that variable in a smart macro and apply logic to it. You end
up with a smart process. So it's not necessarily a tool, but a machining center
with logic applied to a Smart Tool, applied with some feedback, and coupling
this together in a closed loop fashion.