bensonwalk

The promise of Industry 4.0 is great news for the adoption of advanced cutting tools. The reason: In interconnected manufacturing systems in which comprehensive data reveal the performance of the system, WNMG Insert the impact of an advanced tool becomes clear.

Jacob Harpaz, president and CEO of IMC, the parent company to cutting tool maker Iscar, repeatedly stressed the connection between Industry 4.0 and cutting tools in a recent day-long series of presentations in which he introduced the many new and upcoming Iscar products to about 600 distributors and other salespeople representing these tools. Iscar organizes an event like this about once every five years, and this year, the move toward data interconnectivity in manufacturing is one the most encouraging developments Mr. Harpaz sees.

Historically, the lack of clarity about manufacturing performance has been the main impediment to shops embracing high-end cutting tools. Tools typically account for just 3 percent of the per-piece production cost of a machined part. However, a High Feed Milling Insert tool's price tag is more visible than its benefits. This fact leaves manufacturers frequently pursuing cost-saving steps that have little impact. For example, at 3 percent of unit cost, finding tooling that is one-third less expensive will only cut the per-piece part cost by 1 percent. Something similar is true of tool life: Even doubling tool life will only cut cost per part by 1.5 percent. However, finding tooling that provides for significantly faster machining or reduced non-cutting time enables each unit of machine and labor time to deliver more parts, likely cutting the cost per piece by 10 or 15 percent.

This argument makes sense in the abstract. The problem is, it can be hard to marshal the data to prove this case as it applies to a specific tool in a specific cut. That is where Industry 4.0 comes in. We are moving into a world in which manufacturing systems increasingly do marshal data such as this, and manufacturers increasingly make use of it.

“The companies that are good at collecting, analyzing and acting on data will be the leaders,” Mr. Harpaz says, and he expects Iscar will serve them via tools able to cut faster or reduce setup, along with inventory systems supporting the aim of 24/7 machining. The company’s “Logiq" product introduction aims at this, and “machine intelligently” is the company’s tagline for this idea.

In his talk to Iscar representatives, Mr. Harpaz spoke for the better part of 10 hours to explain many classes of new cutting tool products—too much to summarize. But here are examples of some of the kinds of tooling that will help manufacturers ready to refine their processes within increasingly data-driven shops:

We tend to focus on the seen instead of the unseen. We focus on the big or urgent things instead of the smaller things. In metalworking, that means we focus on machine tools.

As well we should. A process is defined by its machines. In your own shop, the machine tools determine the parts the shop can take on and the operations it can perform. Machine tools make the shop what it is—sort of.

Actually, there is more to it than that. The machine requires cutting tools. And because this tooling is (relatively speaking) such a small, quiet and consistent part of the process, many shops fail to give their cutting tools ample consideration. The machine is seen as an “investment” while the tool is seen as an “expense.” This very distinction serves to conceal just how far the cutting tool may go in determining what the machine can do.

For a moment, shift your perspective. The process is more than the sum of its machines. deep hole drilling inserts Right here, in the midst of a busy day, shut out the way you might usually think about the shop, so you can briefly see things differently. Imagine all of the cutting edges. That is, imagine all of the edges shearing through all of the workpieces that your shop will machine today. Imagine all of that material removal—this is your process. Your machines get the cutting tools to where they need to be, but the cutting tools are, quite literally, at the leading edge of what you do. And you may not have noticed.

You may not have noticed, because it is easy to fall into the habit of seeing your tools as just a commodity to feed the machines.

If this is too often the view in your shop, then you may have missed a subtle shift. You may have missed the way cutting tools have changed. More rigorous machining requirements and more challenging workpiece materials have slot milling cutters demanded more of tooling, and tooling technology has risen to the challenge. Now, new choices in cutting tools might give your shop capabilities it never expected before—perhaps including the speed to increase capacity by day, or the tool life and reliability to run through the night without an operator.

Three companies hope you will understand this idea better. They are: Diamond Innovations, Precision Dormer and Sandvik Coromant. The companies jointly contributed articles for a special online knowledge center, “The New Rules of Cutting Tools.” Find it at www.mmsonline.com/newrules.

Sometime soon, step back to take a second look at your tools. What are the implications of not using the most effective tooling? You may never know! Plenty of shops get OK performance from OK tools, unaware that a different process built around different tooling might let them do more with their machines than they ever thought they could. If you haven’t reconsidered your cutting tools in a while, you might not know what you are missing.

Tsugami/Rem Sales offers the Tsugami M08J, an highly rigid two-axis turning center with a manual tailstock, programmable quill and A2-6 spindle nose. The lathe’s rigid construction uses boxed ways for the X axis and oversized linear TNGG Insert guides for the Z axis for heavy-duty machining. Thermal displacement compensation surface milling cutters comes standard on the M08J, which boosts machine accuracy by measuring the thermal displacement using the touch sensors installed on the X-axis slide. 

With an 8" chuck, an eight-station automatic turret and a FANUC 0i-TF control, the lathe handles applications such as turning, drilling, boring and thread cutting. Options include the addition of high pressure coolant, foot pedals and a chip conveyor.