Heavy Equipment Case Study

Customer Profile:
An Illinois contract heavy equipment manufacturer of medium to large precison-machined components.

Challenge:

Lower production costs in the back spot facing of 3,500 holes per year on aluminum cast components running on a Mori-Seiki.

Steiner Solution:

Replacing the two piece tool being used and then fully automating the back spotfacing operation with a bump style activated Autofacer® from Steiner Technologies. The operation consisted of entering a 1” think wall in a 0.551″ hole with a spotface requirement of 01.063”. Eliminating both a costly secondary operation and operator intervention while speeding up cycle times.

Results:

A drastic cost cutting per hole occurred. From a $9.02 cph to just .49¢ cph with an annualized production time savings of 499 hours. Which translated to a cost savings of $29,858.50 per year utilizing the machine’s $60/per hour rate. A safety concern was also eradicated with the elimination of the secondary operation. The operator no longer has to reach into the live machine to change out a cutter head blade.

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