The standalone machining center, seemingly the staple platform for job-shop machining, is becoming an endangered species within Advance CNC Machining, a machining provider serving aerospace, defense and other industries in Grove City, Ohio.
Out of more than a dozen four- and five-axis machining centers, fewer than one-third are not served by some form of pallet automation. The shop’s latest investment is a bank of four Makino horizontal machining centers all united by a pallet system supplying work to all of the machines. This is one of three pallet systems (Makino’s MMC) uniting various quantities of machines throughout the shop.
Cassandra Metell, VP of manufacturing, says there was no initial intention for machines with automation to become the shop’s standard. The move to automation began with an employment challenge. When the shop mostly relied on standalone machine tools, it could not find the skilled employees it needed to expand, but had to expand anyway. Increasing the ability to run unattended by adopting pallet automation—and reorganizing to use this automation effectively—offered an alternative way to increase output.
That was the beginning, capacity. The equally compelling advantage today is flexibility. Running volume production for the aerospace and defense sectors means being ready to support the customers in these sectors when they need short runs of complex parts for their development work. Standalone machine tools generally require setups to be dismantled to accomodate needs such as this, meaning the short runs are disruptive. With the pallet system, pallets can be parked in the rack with the setup remaining in place. Parts are loaded into the fixtures on retrieved pallets via load stations independent of the machining centers. All of this makes it easy to pause jobs and shift between jobs with little delay. The shop can break stride without losing efficiency.
Cassandra discusses some of the considerations needed to succeed with a shop built around pallet automation. Watch my conversation with her: