Overwhelmed?

[[Me...]]

We just got a new CMM about a year ago. Brings us up to 3.
Small shop.
But we just brought in a 10 pallet horizontal. Just for one part. Will be running in about 2 weeks.
Word is they're maybe two more in the works next year.
The parts are not tight tolerances, well, a couple, but they're just busy. So we could be going from running 8 per day to 40, running over night. It takes two pallets to complete the parts. We looking to truncate the programs but we can only clip off so much. So now we have told management that we will probably need one or two more cmms' to do things. If their are more pallet setups.
(Crickets).
Any of this sound familiar?

[[Cl...]]

We have three Conturas, two O-inspects, and a Hexagon Optiv (PC-DMIS) We are growing fast. CMM capacity is close to being maxed out. We will be starting a new job soon that requires 100% CMM inspection, for one of the biggest customers out there in medical device. could definitely use another CMM.

[[Mi...]]

We have:

2 Contura XT Gold
2 Eclipse with RDS and Renishaw Touch Trigger
2 Eclipse with XXT
4 GageMax with XT Gold
23 DuraMax with XXT, Some TL1 and some TL3

....and two programmers.

Thankfully we make the same parts for many years.

[[Lo...]]

I know the feeling.
2 Conturas
1 DuraMax
1 Spectrum
2 Hexagon
I'm the only programmer with only one operator. Busy times. The struggle is real but its job security. 😃

[[Ow...]]

Yeah, I’ve been in that situation many times.

I’ve/we’ve done a few things to cut down on the inspection volume/time in scenarios like it.

With multiple operations between machining centers and a good way to qualify the machining centers accuracy (ball bar), if you have a probe on the machine, you can use the next operations machine to check the previous machine operations work.

There is often a lot of variation/distortion created by machines, fixtures and material (casting residual stress release, thermal expansion, tooling and annealing process failures, etc) that have to be proven to not affect part accuracy in a free state but, with them variables removed by improved clamping/fixturing/tooling/material, you can confidently eliminate a lot of external inspection by doing it within the manufacturing cell.
Most don’t want to add any time to the machine as a reason not to but they don’t consider the time spent sitting idle waiting on inspection. If you don’t want to add another CMM or out-of-process lag-time, it may be an option.

[[Cl...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

"you can confidently eliminate a lot of external inspection by doing it within the manufacturing cell".

We have multiple value streams (manufacturing cells) in conjunction with Kaizen. Much of the inspection is done within each cell.

[[Ün...]]

When we started work, we had 4 lines and we were supporting with 1 contura. Despite the increase in the number of lines and machines, we spent a lot of effort to have the second device removed. Unfortunately, the bosses do not think much when buying machinery for the production department, but it is very difficult to convince when it comes to equipment investment for quality.

We produce 4 million pieces of parts annually and our number of parts is high. I use mini-plans and pallets for intermediate measurements to keep up with the density.

[[Gr...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

Sounds like that start of a Christmas carol parody. "One the first day of Christmas, Carl Zeiss gave to me..."

[[ke...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

Does this mean you flip the part to complete the measurement?

[[Me...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

So, what my post was initially about was the potential of being over whelmed by increased volume of parts from the floor.
The part I was referencing takes 2 pallets to complete machining of 8 parts. They will be now making them on a 10 pallet horizontal and running through the night. Though, at this time, only using 6 pallets. So 24 extra parts to meet us in the morning. 1.5 hours to check 8 parts. (Sighhh).
We're looking at truncating the CMM program.

[[Er...]]

Same here. CMM was down because of a Z drive for a month.

I am adding sub-clearances and fine tuning programs to shorten cycle times. Normally the time spent would not be worth it.

[[Ow...]]

Well, I’ll throw this out there even though you may have already considered it and It’s not an option, often times it is.

If you use any kind of SPC software (CP/CPK/PPK/STD) to evaluate and gauge how close each characteristic’s are running to its specification limits, you could use it to discuss with engineering or the customer and see if there are characteristics that time has proven will always be within spec and remove/mask/mini-plan them to keep them from being inspected in the program and save time.

For example, say you have a part that has 100 bolt holes with a large tolerance that are always within spec and it takes 5 minutes to check them, you can make a mini-plan option to not check them knowing you have confidence that that part of the process is repeatable. You could also make it an option to only check them if it’s 1st piece off the machine inspection (new set-up where things change, ect ) and not check them when it’s just an in-process check.

[[To...]]

The Dynamic Planning option in Calypso 2021 has the ability to create these inspection plans automatically based on SPC data, user preferences, etc. I was looking for more details online but could only find this overview.

https://www.zeiss.com/metrology/product ... -news.html

Dynamic Planning.JPG

[[Me...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

We don't use any cpk or such but what I'm looking at is just grouping segments of the program as an alternative. In your ex. 100 holes they would be broken up and included into, say 4 groups. Each group checks something that would relatet through the other 3 groups. (Hopefully), will flag an issue that would/could be found in any of the 4 groups. Also in checking the parts I could choose anyone of the groups during the run so in fact 4 pcs. would basically cover the whole program. 4 pcs in the time of one.