Without Adding Equipment or More Overhead -
When business is good the challenge becomes how to move more work through your shop, while maintaining profitability. So before you run out and buy more equipment or hire additional help you should first make sure your operation is as efficient as possible. Know where time is spent, where bottlenecks are sapping productivity, and what your high-value processes are.
Making chips is making money, unfortunately, CNC machining is dependant on both pre and quite often, post or secondary processing, both of which can delay the completion of finished parts. Machines at idle are not making money, and if they are waiting for material to be prepped or worse yet, being used to square up materials or remove large amounts of material that could be done much more efficiently, well, that is a bottleneck waiting to happen.
If you can keep your CNC machining centers focused on the high-value work of finish machining, and feed them with a steady supply of machine-ready material that is prepped to near net specifications, you can realize a 25% increase in production throughput without adding more equipment or overhead.
With a single purchase order, you can receive custom Machine-Ready Blanks that are ready to load directly into your CNC machining centers; eliminating the need for in-house sawing, grinding, flattening, squaring operations and outside processing. Each blank arrives deburred, clean and to customer specifications – guaranteed as close as +/- .0005” dimensionally and as close as .0002” flatness, squareness, and parallelism.
Plug in your own numbers to see if Machine-Ready Blanks make sense for your next job
100 of the following parts were machined, with each step of the process timed to better understand the value of Machine-Ready Blanks.
Raw stock (left), custom Machine-Ready Blank (center), finished machined part (right)
- First, the material was prepped for finish machining starting from raw stock
- Next, Machine-Ready Blanks were introduced into the equation, noting an increase in the value-added material cost over raw stock
- Finally, finish machining was completed on the parts to calculate the high-value process
The following are the results of the 100 part production machining test. Using your own part, time and cost estimates, change the numbers and see if Machine-Ready Blanks can save you time and money on your next job.
Starting with Raw Stock
Material: 6061-T651 Aluminum
3/4 X 9 7/8 X 16 3/8 (Oversize)
Qty: 100 pcs.
Prep Machining Time: 11.12 min
Operator Intervention: ≈15 min
Total Run Time: ≈26 min per part
Starting with Machine-Ready Blanks
Material: 6061-T651 Aluminum
.625 X 9.700 X 16.250
Tolerances:
+/-.001” Thickness, +/-.002” W/L
Flatness: within .002”
Qty: 100 pcs
Prep Machining: 0 min
Operator Intervention: 0 min
Total Run Time: 0 min per part
Finish Machining
Quantity: 100 pcs
Finish Machining: 54.83 min
Total Run Time: 54.83 min per part
Conclusion
- Machining cost savings: $40 per part
Based on eliminating 26 min of prep time on each part - Material increase: $30 per part
Additional cost for value-added material - Total cost savings: $10 per part
Total job savings: $1,000
Based on 100 parts - Throughput increase: ≈26 min. per part
- Capacity increase: ≈ Over 43 hours
Almost one week of new found production time
Do your own math, then consider Machine-Ready Blanks from TCI Precision Metals for your next production job.