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Published Editorial Bottleneck Banished By Timesavers
The recent installation of a Grindingmaster Timesavers disc deburring machine at Preston-based Precision Surfacing is proving a revelation. Not only has the new machine improved the consistency of parts, it has also greatly reduced manning levels and other associated costs.
The flat, profiled parts, supplied to the aerospace industry, have to be delivered burr-free. The company's initial response was to put more people onto the job as and when demand required. However, as many of these parts are manufactured from clad alloy material, the hand deburring operation required a high level of skill and an inordinate amount of time. Using a combination of flapper discs and hand-held sanders and temporary staff the surface quality, while acceptable, was not consistent.
The difficulty with temporary workers was the effort and cost required to train them to a standard high enough for the work they were doing. "At times we have had nine temps working on the section in each shift," says Mark Poole, Manufacturing Manager, "and as the temps were different on every occasion, we spent a huge amount of time training them. This also distracted the permanent staff from what they were doing. We needed a different solution to our problem. One that would cope with fluctuating workloads, the variety of material that we are working with and one that needed minimal operator input".
Problems were compounded when one particular, major, customer condensed a 10 month parts schedule into three months, due to its own internal reorganisation. "We quickly realised that to meet that demand with conventional solutions was an impossibility with only temporary staff to call on," says Mr Poole. The answer proved to be a Timesavers disc deburring machine supplied by Christchurch, Dorset-based Ellesco, which was delivered and installed within two weeks of the order being placed.
"We are running the Timesavers equipment on a single shift but already we are deburring the same volume of work in one day that would have taken four men, one week to achieve. At the same time we have caught up with a backlog of work, and a further cost-saving will come on stream as we have asked our sub-contractors to supply parts without deburring, something that we were being charged for in the past.
"Our permanent team is now able to cope with all of the deburring work, eliminating the costs associated with temporary staff. We quickly realised that people are not cost-effective for this type of work, nor are they consistent."
Reject parts are now a thing of the past. "We have always produced parts of good quality," he says. "This machine, I believe, makes us better, such that there is nobody in the UK that can supply these parts to the standard and on-time delivery ratio that we are supplying them at."
Before installing the Timesavers machine a typical part required several hand deburring operations that took around 10 minutes to complete. Now three parts are completely deburred inside 30 seconds, including washing and drying of the parts as they are fed through the machine.
Operator Paul Jackson is an enthusiastic supporter of the new Grindingmaster Timesavers Disc deburring machine by Precision Surfacing, thanks to its speed, simplicity and cleanliness.
Racking containing what would have taken four men one week to deburr now carries enough work for one day following the introduction of the Timesavers machine supplied by Ellesco.
The highly productive Timesavers machine is eating into a backlog of parts while at the same time coping with supply from sub-contractors and internal supply of parts.
Manufactured by Grindingmaster in the Netherlands, the Timesavers 4100 Disc machine uses a large, rotating, ScotchBrite ® pad to deburr, tolerance finish, and finish components. Available in three widths (600, 900, 1100 and 1350 mm) it also has the advantage of being able to work components with features such as louvres.
Changeover time between components is minimised, taking only a matter of seconds, by the simple-to-use control screen via which the operator can adjust the abrasive, ScotchBrite ®, disc height, throughfeed rate and disc rotation speed. Where particular components are expected on a regular basis the control unit can store up 99 'programs' containing the parameters mentioned, to make set-up even quicker. When the disc becomes worn it is removed from its Velcro ® locators and changed, again in a matter of minutes.
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