Boulevard Machine & Gear is a family-owned gear cutting shop in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts serving the aerospace and defense industries. In 2006, Susan Kasa acquired the company and began implementing plans to increase Boulevard Machine & Gear’s efficiency.
Complicating Kasa’s focus on growth and efficiency was an observation from several of the shop’s machinists, who determined that they would run into issues completing certain jobs with the shop’s conventional side-lock and collet holders. Tool holding became a priority Face Milling Insertsfor Kasa as she started investing 20-30% of revenue into modernization and innovation of the shop. Boulevard Machine reached out to Jim Roberts, sales engineer at Lindco Springfield, to see if he could guide them to a solution.
“Boulevard wanted to run more accurately and extend tool life,” Roberts says. “I immediately recommended Boulevard take a look at the Haimer product offering.”
After seeing Haimer’s tooling firsthand, Boulevard Machine decided to invest in a Haimer Power Clamp Special Edition shrink fit machine, Standard Shrink chucks and Power Shrink chucks and extensions.
Haimer specializes in inductive shrink fit technology for tool holders. The company says its technology’s high gripping torque and 360-degree clamping around the cutting tool provides superior gripping torque while allowing for reduced runout, balance repeatability and clamping consistency.
Boulevard Machine now has a wide assortment of CAT40 and HSK-63 holders in both Power and Standard Shrink, as well as a wide variety of extensions. Since switching to the heat shrink holders, Boulevard Machine says it has been able to pick up its feeds and speeds. One notable example stemmed from the 0.75" Haimer Ultra Short Power Shrink HSK-63 holder, which cut one material at 750" per minute where before the shop could only cut 300" per minute. The shop now says the holder is its go-to for roughing, and that the holder keeps projection lengths short — resulting in more rigidity than conventional side-lock or milling chucks.
Boulevard Machine & Gear now finds themselves doing as many five-axis jobs as they do three- or four-axis jobs. The Haimer Power Mini shrink fit holders and shrink fit extensions enable the shop to machine hard-to-reach areas without concern. This includes the interior of billet 6061 aluminum blocks for the aerospace industry, which Boulevard Machine work down to 10" × 7" × 7" before hollowing them out to a 0.125" wall thickness, with corner radii also at 0.125". ER holders could not reach the corners due to the nose of the holder, and side-lock holders produced too much runout to achieve the necessary surface finish and tool life. The Haimer Shrink holder and extensions were able to reach the corners, and the reduced runout maintained an even chipload to improve surface finish and tool life.
“We've had extensions stacked into Haimer basic holders with more than 10" of projection and as little as 0.0002” runout," says Kristian Kasa, CNC programmer at Boulevard Machine. “Without these holders, we would not be able to machine a large amount of our jobs through our shop.”
“We work closely with our programmers and engineers to make sure that what we are implementing and using is making their jobs as easy and efficient as possible,Carbide Drilling Inserts ” Susan Kasa says. “Between having the Haimer technology and staying up-to-date with everything else, our team is no longer hesitant about quoting or taking jobs, and they have the confidence to do any task because of the sophisticated technology.”
Christian Reed is an inventor, engineer and Army veteran currently trying to fund (through Kickstarter) his introduction of the compact multipurpose tool shown in the video above. He got the idea for this tool—the “Gripsher”—during his own recent overseas deployment. In the field, he had only a limited selection of tools available to him, so he began to imagine the design for a very small hand tool that could perform a large array of functions. That is, a tool that might be both easy and invaluable for a service member to carry.
To me, one of the interesting aspects of Mr. Reed’s experience with his invention is the number of different manufacturing processes he has already touched so far in the course of developing it. In his own words, here is the tool’s development story to this point. Mr. Reed says:
"At first, I was only able to do some drawings and make a few cardboard models with a utility knife. But when I returned from overseas in January, I began to use real tools to begin the prototyping process. Wanting to save money, I did quite a few 3D printer iterations to get the design down, but the desktop printer I was initially using couldn't accurately make parts this small. After I found a better 3D printer for this work, I was able to accurately and quickly make iterations, Coated Inserts sometimes more than two in a day. Once we reached a design we were happy with, we decided to begin producing in metal.
To save time, we began just waterjet cutting a few samples to get a feel for what the parts would be like made of metal. We adjusted and used some 3D printed parts in conjunction with the metal parts to get a better feel for certain aspects of the tool’s functionality.
Since the tool would ultimately need to be made of stainless steel, we switched to getting parts machined at a job shop. The first round came out pretty well, considering that some of the cuts needed to made using a 1/32-inch end mill at a depth of 0.100 inch in 316 stainless. We made a few design changes and had another round made, this time in 17-4 PH stainless with laser engraving, some with black oxide coating. The results Deep Hole Drilling Inserts were great and we have been using these parts for testing and photo shoots.
Once we had the final design nailed down, we began to explore manufacturing options. CNC machining was ruled out due to fixturing complexity and the amount of small end mills that would be needed to mill each part. We began to explore metal injection molding and realized it would be a great fit for this product. We have been working with our manufacturer now to make three mold tools: one family mold for the left and right arm, one family mold for the knife and file tools, and a plastic injection mold for the green jaws at the bottom."
On Mr. Reed’s Kickstarter campaign, one of the support levels includes donation of a Gripsher tool to a U.S. service member as part of the reward. Learn more about that campaign.
“Walnuts are cool,” Shawn Wentzel says with a shrug when asked why he decided to plant 7,000 walnut trees on his property in Lodi, California. Now two years old, the CCMT Insert orchard is a growing side business. Surrounded by rolling plains and vineyards, it begins at the back door of his primary source of income: an old horse-barn-turned-machine-shop with plenty of space for additional milling and turning equipment to complement the current stable of six machine tools.
He named the shop Wenteq, and with revenue growing at approximately 10 percent per year, prospects for filling the rest of the 15,000-square-foot space seem bright. The newest technology addition is a robot to load and unload various parts for automotive and agricultural equipment from a turning center. With Mr. Wentzel opting to do much of the legwork, integrating the robot is a work in progress. No matter. As was the case with the walnut trees, he sees no barrier in his lack of automation-integration experience. “There&TCGT Insertrsquo;s nothing like doing it yourself,” the 36-year-old says, articulating the independent spirit that first led him to turn his machining hobby into a business nearly 15 years ago. “What can anyone learn in school that they can’t learn on the shop floor?”
This inclination to make his own way is one reason why Mr. Wentzel says he appreciates the open-architecture Thinc-OSP CNCs on the shop’s five Okuma machine tools. These controls’ application programming interface (API), which is essentially the set of tools and resources ?used to integrate with? the CNC and develop functionality for it, is based on the same Microsoft Windows operating platform that drives many personal computers. That means the CNCs can use much of the same software as any other Windows-based computer, including downloadable apps such as the GPS navigators, heart-rate monitors and weather trackers common to consumer mobile devices.
Of course, the apps Okuma offers are designed to make life easier in a CNC machine shop. Many are available for free via the machine tool builder’s online app store. This store has been growing steadily since its launch in 2014, thanks in part to the active participation of shops like Wenteq. Whenever Mr. Wentzel has had an idea—whenever there is something he wished his CNC could do—he says he likely can make it happen by asking Okuma distributor Gosiger Automation to develop an app.
He is not alone. According to Okuma, many apps now available for download originated with end users like Mr. Wentzel. In this way, the company essentially invites its customers to participate in the development of new CNC functionality. Mr. Wentzel was an early enthusiast of this approach, and Wenteq became an early proving ground after the app store’s debut. “When an app came out, we were never scared to throw it on a machine and try it out,” he says.
These small programs all help Mr. Wentzel and his three shopfloor employees avoid making mistakes or wasting time, he says. For instance, the shop does not have an offline tool presetter (not yet, anyway), so many of the most commonly used apps help streamline the manual entry of compensating offsets at machine controls. Others provide basic machine monitoring functionality. Here are five examples of apps the shop finds valuable, two of which were created at Mr. Wentzel’s request:
This app enables inexperienced operators to edit common variables in the control’s parameters section without making mistakes. (Common variables are used to store offsets, part counts and other temporary data that is specific to a particular part program.) “I don’t want employees going into the CNC’s parameters section,” Mr. Wentzel explains. “The common variable section is one page away from a machine system location. If something were to be changed on this page, the machine could crash.”
Instead, Variable Manager presents only the relevant common variables, which can be pulled from the CAM program or defined by Mr. Wentzel when he programs a job. All variable slots can be clearly labeled for convenience and efficiency, and a “revert” function can quickly restore previous values in the event of an error.
On the shop’s palletized horizontal machining center (HMC), Variable Manager makes it easy for even inexperienced operators to change tools for a new job without interrupting production. To facilitate this, the machine’s cycle includes a “dummy pallet” associated with a CAM program that does nothing more than initiate a macro to touch-probe the newly changed tools. Any time before this pallet cycles in, the operator simply opens Variable Manager, inputs the new tool numbers and clicks “set” to initiate a probing cycle for every changed tool. In short, tools can be probed whenever it is convenient rather than immediately upon inserting them in the 146-position automatic toolchanger (ATC). “It puts only what’s relevant in front of you,” Mr. Wentzel says about Variable Manager. “You just type in the tool numbers and click once.” (Tool numbers generally correspond to the number of the slot in the ATC—that is, tool 1 goes into slot 1).
Variable Manager also enables adjusting a machine’s schedule on-the-fly by simply changing the variable associated with part count. Capability to change part counts from the floor, while the machine runs and without editing the program, is particularly useful for the shop’s bar-fed turning centers, Mr. Wentzel says. As is the case with HMC tool offsets, there is no need to navigate through the CNC to find the variable associated with part count. There is little risk of changing the wrong variable or altering a parameter that should not be changed.
Developed by Gosiger at Mr. Wentzel’s request, Manual Data Input (MDI) Tool Call is used for the shop’s LB-3000 lathe. With a subspindle and a Y-axis turret that accommodates as many as 96 tools for both front- and backworking operations, setting offsets on this machine can be complicated. Adding to the confusion is the fact that as many as eight tools can be stacked in the same turret station (four for the main spindle and four for the subspindle). Each requires its own offset, but tools stacked in this way are more difficult to probe because they do not line up with the centerline of the spindle at the turret’s home position. Jogging the turret into position along the Y axis requires either moving it manually (and carefully) or entering a series of coordinate moves into the CNC (again, carefully).
MDI Tool Call reduces this task to just a few keystrokes. The operator simply opens the app, enters the tool-station number, designates which tool requires a new offset, and presses “start” to move the Y axis into the correct position. “I was typing in the same stuff over and over again, and I thought ‘This is dumb,’” Mr. Wentzel recalls about the app’s development. “I approached Gosiger with an idea to make it easy for anyone to do it fast, and without any experience or knowledge.”
Wenteq’s work sometimes demands changing tool offsets frequently, sometimes between every part. “We had a tight-tolerance project a few months ago in which we were measuring every part to check for insert wear and then changing offsets as needed,” Mr. Wentzel says. “Fat-finger it one time in a situation like that, and you can lose a part.”
There is little risk of that as of just a few months prior to Modern Machine Shop’s visit late last year, when Mr. Wentzel pitched Gosiger on the functionality that became the Easy Adjust app. This app presents operators with a simple interface consisting of four slider bars, each corresponding to the offset for a specific cutting tool. Clicking the “plus” and “minus” buttons adjusts the offset by a prespecified amount (changing this amount requires a password). As the operator adjusts the buttons, the bar changes color depending on how close the adjustment gets to prespecified minimum and maximum limits. Limiting the display to four offsets helps keep things simple, he adds, noting that few jobs require adjusting more than that. This simplicity enables even the least-experienced shopfloor employees to be productive while they learn, and above all, to avoid mistakes and scrapping parts.
Around the time the Okuma app store debuted in 2014, Mr. Wentzel had been seeking a simple, affordable solution for basic machine monitoring. “For one system I considered, the company wanted thousands of dollars plus a monthly fee,” he recalls, “but we don’t need all that functionality. We’re small enough that we don’t need deep utilization information or fancy dashboards with a bunch of lines. We were just looking for a simple, at-a-glance view of machine status.”
As it turned out, this functionality was available for free at the Okuma app store. Since then, basic status information for every machine tool has been displayed on two 50-inch TV monitors that are visible throughout the shop. Green indicates a machine that is running, orange indicates idle equipment and red denotes a potential problem.
Mr. Wentzel says setup was easy, with the free apps pushing status information through the same Wi-Fi connection used to link machines and send part programs. An Intel Compute Stick—essentially, a mini Windows 10 computer that plugs into a USB port—installed in each of the monitors receives the data from the machines. Mr. Wentzel can also view the data on his smartphone.
This is all possible thanks to MTConnect, an open-source communications protocol that facilitates interconnection and communication among CNC machine tools and other manufacturing equipment. Specifically, Wenteq uses three apps: MTConnect Agent/Adapter, which provides the basic MTConnect communications functionality; MTConnect Display, which scans a shop network for compatible devices (in this case, the Compute Stick) to make installation plug-and-play; and MTConnect Display Mobile, which provides the mobile phone connection.
Access to status displays is not Mr. Wentzel’s only means of monitoring machine tools. While walking the floor of the 2018 International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS), he received a call with a distinct ringtone, one assigned to a specific entry in his contact list. On the other end was not a person, but one of his machines, reporting a problem. This simple capability is thanks to the free Machine Alert app, which sends CNC status information and screen shots via email or text whenever certain user-specified conditions are met.
Back in 2014, Mr. Wentzel had to download every app. Now, many come pre-installed on the CNCs of new Okuma machines, including MTConnect Agent/Adapter, apps that track maintenance schedules, and apps that calculate overall run time and remaining run time, among other capabilities.
The Smile presetter and measurement machine from Zoller features a user-friendly interface and a new ergonomic table system design. The machine can be equipped with operating technologies including Pilot 2.0 for basic measuring and inspection operations; Pilot 2mT with a touchscreen Face Milling Inserts and freely configurable user interface; or the Pilot 3.0 comprehensive image processing technology. According to the company, Pilot 2mT is easy to learn and highly customizable. Respective users can define priorities, and highlight or backdrop information depending on the application. Cutting edge shapes can be automatically recognized, and more than 100 different cutting edge shapes can be measured. The Compass navigation system helps to ensure Lathe Carbide Inserts accurate measuring results and simple operation, the company says. Power-operated tool clamping is available as an option for high changing accuracy, especially with HSK.
The Ganesh Cyclone 78-MSY is a subspindle CNC lathe designed to enable efficient completion of a job in only one operation. The full-sized subspindle features coolant flush, air blast and a finished parts ejector for removal of the finished part. Cut-off confirmation ensures that the part was properly separated before the subspindle moves back. The coolant system features a flow confirmation pressure switch to ensure coolant is getting to the cutting tools.
The turning machine features a 3" bar capacity and a 16-station BMT-65 servo turret that can accommodate more than 30 tools. Radial and axial driven tools have equal access to the fully synchronized main and Lathe Carbide Inserts subspindle. The 30-hp, 4,000-rpm main spindle and 7.5-hp milling spindles feature rigid tapping and are optimized for efficient metal removal, the company says.
The heavy-duty machine is equipped with roller-bearing linear ways for greater rigidity, enabling more aggressive cutting with improved surface finish and tool life. The linear Y-axis features 3.93" of cross travel. The lathe accommodates S-30 and Quick-Grip collet chucks as well as 10" three-jaw chucks, and is equipped with a parts CCMT Insert gripper and parts conveyor. A Mitsubishi M720 control offer 680 block look-ahead to ensure accurate feature definition on parts at accelerated feed rates.
