Gosiger News

A CNC machine shop in the Midwest (they’ve asked to remain anonymous) runs batches of 500 – 6,000 parts for a variety of metalworking customers. One of their specialties is precision grinding of multi-faceted cylindrical parts. When they sought to add capacity to their grinding operation, they evaluated various products and settled on an Okuma GA26 grinder. To maximize productivity, Gosiger Automation designed a solution that includes the Okuma grinder, Fanuc LR-Mate robots, a palletized loading system and centralized control.

It seems like the pressure on manufacturers just keeps building. The competition is coming at you from down the street, around the corner and across the water. Costs for qualified operators (if you can find them), health care, materials and energy keep rising, while customers demand higher quality, lower prices and faster delivery.

When IMTS 2012 opens on September 10 in Chicago’s McCormick Place, Gosiger technical staff will be seen all around the South building, from Gosiger’s own booth (S-9266) to Okuma’s booth S-8500 and Hardinge booth S-8148.

The popularity of titanium alloys as a material for structural and other parts has grown exponentially in the past few years. Unfortunately, many manufacturers find that working with titanium is challenging due to the physical characteristics of the metal and its chemical composition. For example, titanium is a poor conductor of heat and more heat is generated when machining titanium than many other metals.

Many energy providers are turning to the process of well fracturing which is good news for CNC shops like Premium Frac Pumps in Fort Worth, Texas. The company makes a line of well fracturing pumps that are critical to this process.

Partners in THINC® is a unique concept developed by Okuma that brings together over 30 leading manufacturing equipment companies, including Gosiger’s factory automation division, to help advance CNC machine and accessory technology while developing real-world solutions for their customers.

Okuma’s stated mission for Partners in THINC is: “…to provide a complete manufacturing solution to our customers - One Source for all the latest in Technology. Our objective is to bring together the leaders of technology providers and create a partnership that will provide the lowest cost, best solution to meet the needs of manufacturing worldwide.”

Do your CNC machine operators or others who report to you miss the point when you give them new information about their jobs, company policies, or customer issues? If so, perhaps you should take a look at your own communication skills. Fact is many of us make the mistake of talking at our employees, instead of talking with them. Too often we engage in simply dumping information, rather than having a conversation. As a result, the person we’re talking too may be overwhelmed with details and just tune us out.

Good workplace communication should be a conversation between you and the employee, not a monologue. If you want the employee to be engaged with your message, they need to feel that what they think is as important as what you tell them. With this in mind, look your employees in the eyes when you talk to them, and let them know you are interested in what they have to say. Don’t talk over the employee, but let them complete their thought before you respond. One of the worst habits busy managers fall into is not giving the employee their full attention. Taking phone calls, texting, or checking emails when having a “conversation” send the employee the message that you believe you’re too busy or too important to hear what they have to say 

CNC machine crashes cost you time and money. They interrupt your manufacturing process, which drives up labor costs and delays delivery to your customers, and they create out-of-pocket costs for repairing damaged equipment and replacing scrapped material.

In your travels around McCormick Place for IMTS 2012 (September 10 – 15) be sure to visit the Gosiger, Inc. and Okuma booths. In either location you’ll find Gosiger applications experts ready to talk about all of your manufacturing needs including 5-axis machining.

Also referred to as universal machining, 5-axis machining offers significant ways to increase productivity even if you don’t perform 5-axis simultaneous machining. The fact is that 60% of parts are only machined on 5 sides, so by using a 5-axis machining center you can completely machine a part in one cycle, often without any special fixtures, and with no costly operator intervention. On the other hand, a CNC machine tool without 5-axis capability typically requires multiple special fixtures and considerable operator time to move the part from one machine to another and set up the parts in between machining cycles.

A fundamental premise of Okuma’s Intelligent Technology concept is to build advanced technologies into their CNC lathes, turning centers, multitasking machines and machining centers. In this way the machines are designed from the outset to increase efficiency for manufacturers. One example is the Okuma Thermo-Friendly Concept.

Dealing with thermal deformation can be a time-consuming activity for the machine operator, often involving many test runs to compensate for the affects of ambient workplace temperatures, heat produced by the machine itself, and heat generated by the machining process. Nothing can prevent these temperature variations from occurring, so the question is: How do you compensate for them? Okuma’s answer is three-fold: (1) Simple machine construction that allows heat to be evenly transmitted, which makes expansion and contraction highly predictable; (2) a thermally symmetrical, double-column, box-build design plus strategic placement of front covers and the rear control cabinet for even heat distribution; (3) Highly Accurate Compensation Technology, managed by the Okuma-developed THINC OSP control system that responds to changes in room temperature, and heat produced by frequent spindle speed changes and dry cutting.