Machines, man and money are the three most important investments in manufacturing industry. In tooling industry, metal working machines are the heart of it. High quality machines which reduces man hours and machine hours to bring maximum productivity and thus profit to the tooling manufacturer. An expensive machine which is not utilized to its full capacity might increase your overheads and affect your profit adversely. Hence it is important to study in detail and identify the right machines for your manufacturing unit before your buy machines.
How to Choose the right Machine?
Important factors to consider before buying machines for your factory.
Before buying machines it is important that you do proper research on the type machines required, different machines available in the market, pros and cons of each machine and cost effectiveness of those machines.
The first step is to decide whether you really require a machine or not. To be more precise, do not buy machines if they are not really required for your business. At times, organizations will buy machines which are used rarely and most of the time these machines are dead assets. For example you are running a metal stamping unit where minimal tool maintenance is going on. You might come across the need for cnc machining in your tooling once in a year or so. Instead of buying a cnc machine, you can very well outsource such works and avoid dead investments in your factory.
Once you are sure about the necessity of machines in your factory, the next step is to identify the exact tasks you want the machine to perform. This is critical in buying the right type of machines for your business. For example, you are running a metal working machine shop where you have lot of jobs which requires milling and boring. A laymen will decide to buy a milling machine and a boring machine. But you are not a layman, but a capable industrialist. You want maximum output for your investment. After looking deeper in to your works, you have identified that, most of your machining works are milling and only a few relief hole boring work come in between. Now you very well know, if you buy a good milling machine with boring attachment you can perform the jobs of both machines.
Accuracy of Machining
Quality requirement of the machined product. You have identified the machining operations and come to a conclusion on which type of machines to buy. Depending upon the quality of requirement of your machined part, you might want identify the correct machines for your factory. Let’s go back to the previous example of milling machine. Suppose your firm is doing lot of precision milling jobs like, mould cavity milling, core milling etc where you need to mill complicated profiles with high accuracy and surface finish. In such a situation you might want to go for cnc milling machines with carbide milling cutters.
On the other hand, if your firm is manufacturing die sets you don’t need cnc milling machines. All you need is a high quality milling machine with DRO fixed to get accurate co-ordinate drilling and milling. However CNC machining can produce work piece with dimensional stability and reduce the time taken for machining thus increasing productivity and reducing scrap.
Metal Cutting Machines
Precision metal working industries use a wide variety of metal cutting machines for fabricating metal parts. Following are some of the metal cutting machines commonly used for metal machining.