Job:

2 Slots of 7 mm width x 5.6 mm depth and 8 mm width x 11.5 mm length on one side of the face and a slot of 25 mm x 5.6 mm depth on opposite side. And a Slitting of width 1.2 mm x 6.5 mm depth.

Customer’s Initial Machining Process:

• Customer used to do the machining in a VMC.
• Customer used to machine one side first and then rotate and slot mill the other end.
• Then the customer used to load the job onto a slitting machine and slit the job.
• This used to consume a lot of time and did not match the per hour requirement of the customer.
• Using a VMC and a separate slitting machine, not only increased the cost of production but also the manufacturing lead time.

Our machine concept & Implementation:

Feature’s & Specs:

• Heavily ribbed, rigid, fabricated & stress relieved base.
• A longitudinal slide with an automatic fixture is mounted on the centre of the base.
• At station 1, on LH a milling head is mounted on a slide which is at angle to the horizontal.
• At station 2, two end milling heads are mounted diametrically opposite to each other on either side of the fixture slide.
• At station 3, a slitting head is mounted on a separate carriage on the other end of the fixture slide.
• Power-pack of our own make.
• Coolant System for chip removal, heat dissipation & fine surface finish.
• Completely enclosed guard to protect from chips and coolant splash.

Sequence of Operation of Machine:

• Load job onto the fixture and press auto cycle.
• The job gets clamped and the milling head at station one moves to make the fist slot.
• The fixture then moves in rapid to the next station where the two milling heads will already be in position.
• The fixture then slows to milling feed speed and moves onto the path of end mills to cut the other 2 slots.
• End milling heads retract and slitting head moves to make the slit.
• Fixture returns to home.
• Job unclamps.
• Unload job.

Final Conclusion:

• The cycle time for complete machining operation is 1 minutes.
• The customer could cope up with the demand and produce per hour requirement.
• A costly VMC could be used for other job.
• CNC operator was avoided thereby reducing the labor cost.
• This amounted to reduced cost with increased productivity.

Video Presentation: