Small pallets can be inspected and brought back into the machining process without incurring any setup time.

“If you can produce a part in one setup, then you’re in luck. If you have to clamp and unclamp a part multiple times to complete it, then we need to talk.”

Gerard Vacio, Big Kaiser in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, sees a lot of costly processing time that could be avoided. Much of the problem stems from unnecessary work handling. Here’s a leading question: how many times, say, do you physically handle the workpiece throughout your machining process?

Now, this followup: with labor rates in this country 10 times more than those to the south of our border, or Asia, are you losing business in the proverbial process?

Vacio thinks many shops are. The product manager of Big Kaiser’s workholding systems is constantly exposed to a shop’s cost of production. To determine the financial health of a shop’s machining practices, he factors in raw material and tooling, along with dedicated fixturing, machine cost, and labor cost. “Most think that the machine and tooling are expensive,” notes Vacio.

“They don’t realize how expensive the operator’s time is, until somebody in Singapore or Malaysia is bidding on the same job.

This setup provides access to three sides of the part. A simple rotation of the pallet will allow the other two sides to be machined.

“All these companies have the same cost of the machine tool and tooling. But their (overseas, Mexico and South America) labor rates are one-tenth of ours. So now we’re looking at how to save on labor. And I’m saying that the easiest way to take the labor out is to eliminate handling of the workpiece.

“If you look at automated cells that make a million parts, a way is found to take all the handling out of it.

“The fact is, every time somebody touches the part, it costs money.”

One of his customers is a turbocharger housing manufacturer who used to spend as much time loosening and tightening set screws as it did on machine cycle time. The firm eventually modularized its fixturing, adopted a portable clamping approach, and went on to cut its production and manufacturing times in half. Once it committed to reducing the operator’s handling time, it saw good things happen.

Not all laborers are created equal

Enter the human factor: not all operators work equally.

“Some don’t always show up for work. Some take cigarette breaks, and some are just slow.” (Vacio has clearly seen many a shop’s labor force at work.)

“Each time they clamp and unclamp a part, they have a chance to waste time and introduce positional errors by not properly seating a part in a cradle before clamping,” he notes. Things go wrong, like part-locating support pads that weren’t cleaned properly, or leaving behind a loose clamp. Hence, the double-headed monster of unnecessary scrap and wasted time.

Low cost fixtures can be designed to hold workpieces in such a way as to allow access to 5 sides of the port.

Enter Vacio.

“We specialize in reducing the amount of time that labor spends in handling a part. Sometimes it can be processed in a vise or chuck. Sometimes it requires a custom fixture. Occasionally, we eliminate all fixtures and put retention knobs on the raw material.” Vacio thinks that palletizing the entire production process can remove over 75 percent handling time.

“If you’re my customer, I’m not going to tell you that a vise is the wrong way to hold it, or that a three-jaw chuck or fixture is wrong, or even if you need a fixture. I’m just saying that if this is the type of part that takes multiple operations, and if you can do more than one operation while it’s being held in the same fixture, then you need to move the fixture from one process to the next, versus unclamping the part and reclamping it in a different fixture every time.”

Doing so eliminates one of the fixtures that cost money. It eliminates time to clamp and unclamp. And it improves the machining accuracy, because the part doesn’t move from datum to datum.

A palletized workpiece is being transferred between its last turning operation and its first milling operation.

Faster throughput

Say you’re going to machine a part that takes three operations. You start with a round piece of stock, saw it to length, put it on the lathe and turn it. To handle the part, you use a three-jaw chuck, which is a very practical solution for holding a round piece of stock. But now it’s the mill’s turn, and chances are you won’t be holding it on a three-jaw chuck any longer. You now place the part into a vise jaw that’s been machined to accept the round form. You do some milling, remove the part, flip it around, and put it on another mill for some more milling.

By this time, the part has lost its roundness, and you need a custom fixture to hold it for the third operation. You’ve basically ended up with three pieces of tooling.

Vacio would ask, “Are the first milling operation and lathe operation able to be machined in the same setup? Can you grab the part in a three-jaw chuck, cut it on the lathe, take the whole chuck jaw right off the lathe with the part attached and stick that whole assembly on the mill, then do the milling work without having to unclamp and reclamp the part?”

Other advantages

Maybe the tooling is fine. It’s just the approach that needs changing.

“I try not so much to try to change the tooling they are using,” says Vacio about his shop customers. Instead, he searches for a way to machine the part through the second and third steps without ever having to unclamp the part. “It can mean faster throughput, better feature-to-feature accuracy, and less chance for the operator to introduce contamination.” It can also mean the operator doesn’t have to judge how much time is required to take the part out.

But shops resist change. If a shop has been producing parts in chucks or vises with low scrap levels and acceptable production costs on relatively low-cost machines, Vacio thinks the shop will likely want to continue down that road.

“Cost” is a dirty word. The shop owner sees the benefit spending $4,000 to convert his machine. But what if we’re talking 20 machines? The reaction is predictable. “ ‘I don’t have that kind of money to invest right now,’” Vacio quotes a customer’s typical response.

Lesson from the 1980s?

“The real answer is this,” he continues. “If you incur a lot of setup time and basically charge your customer not to make parts while changing parts and swapping fixtures—all nonproductive time—then an $80,000 investment to convert those machines might pay itself back in 3 months. Payback times are very quick. We basically turn all of your processing time into production time. None of it is wasted time for setup or part handling.”

Knowing that, why do people still hesitate to jump all over this technology?

“People resist change,” admits Vacio. “If you’ve been putting parts in vises all your life and somebody says, okay, put it in the vise once and leave it in and start moving the vise around, they resist. It doesn’t always appease the operator. People get comfortable.”

The 1950s era signaled productive years for America. When the 1980s arrived, a challenge to change the thinking of the way we always did things before stared down the faces of many industrial companies like the barrel of a shotgun. Those who embraced the Deming philosophy, for example, didn’t necessarily survive—but they had a better chance than those who resisted change.

What accounted for human nature then is still true today. Vacio sees a disturbing mentality, one in which his shop customers are very comfortable in doing more of what they already know how to do.

“One of the biggest problems I have,” he says, “is getting people to do things differently.”