Ever since Smits Machinefabriek BV of Valkenswaard was established in the 1970s, the company has undertaken precision engineering work on a subcontracting basis. Turning, grinding and milling with an average run size of 200 parts. Smits’ customers are mainly in the semiconductor, medical and oil industries, the automotive sector and manufacturers of electronic microscopes.
A precision job from Smits. The housing of an electronic microscope, size about 400x400x400 mm.
“There’s no doubt that competition has become far keener in recent years”, says CEO Peter Smits. “Quality and prices were what used to count, but now delivery has become an important competition tool. And that’s where lead times come into the picture.”
“Since our competitors machines are just as fast as ours, what we need to do is keep them running longer than they can. The company with the most spindle-hours wins!”
CEO Peter Smits: “The company with the most spindle-hours wins!”
“A year or so ago we realised that we would have to increase the capacity of our milling department. Our Hermle C800U is a highly efficient machine, but however much we ‘stretched’ the operator’s working hours we could not extract more than 50 spindle-hours a week.”
Introducing a night shift was not an option, and we didn’t think it made sense to invest in a second machine which would also operate only during the day. After all, there is unexploited capacity in the existing machine.
Smits began to think about installing a pallet changer which would keep the machine running overnight and at weekends. They scoured the market and finally chose a WorkPal Compact Servo with a magazine for 24 Macro-pallets.
But there was a problem. The C800U is a portal machine, so the work table can only be accessed from the front. This meant that the pallet changer had to be placed in front of the machine. But having a pallet changer there obstructs the operator’s freedom of action.
A highly-efficient production cell – the Hermle C800U and WorkPal Compact Servo.
What to do? Peter Smits: “A distinct advantage of System 3R is that they don’t just supply ‘bits of metal’; they supply production solutions, where the products are a part of the solution. We discussed the problem with René van der Peet of System 3R, and a stroke of genius happened: we would put the pallet changer on rails!
During the day, the operator works manually on the machine, while preparing WorkPal for the night-time run by loading NC programs into the machine and workpieces into the pallet changer magazine.
A specialist area for Smits is the development and production of customised shock absorber systems for motor sport (Formula 3000, DTM etc.) under the AST trademark. This operation currently keeps 10 employees busy. 95% of these special products are exported, about half to Japan.
At the end of the day, WorkPal is pushed into the working position, locked with a few simple manual operations and hey presto! you have a fully-automatic production cell which keeps going all night. Suddenly you’ve doubled the number of spindle-hours of the machine. And remember – the company with the most spindle-hours wins!
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Layout drawing:
Hermle C800U + WorkPal Compact Servo
Related links:
Macro
WorKPal Compact Servo
Automation in general