why do i bother

[BrokenBiker]

in work, i run 2 okuma lb-15 cnc lathes. They are dated to 1986.
we use them for turning cast steel parts with fairly tight tolerances, with each lathe doi g a different operation. One for outside dis and one for boring.

anyway, for a while now i have been complaining that the cuts being taken are far too heavy, the spindle speed is a tad fast as well. Lately we have been getting al-12 alarm code on the fanuc drive, which indicates over current because the motor is struggling. It makes a horrible noise when cutting, as if its tearing the metal away instead of cutting, the finish is horrendous and if i had to put my name to it as a customer job i would die of shame.

we have had reps in from a cnc firm and from tooling firms and everyone says the same thing, put another roughing cut in and the problems will go away.

what do they do? Increase the spindle speed and take another .4 on the cut.

well tonight it decided it didn't want to be a lathe anymore, and i am now in charge of running a 2 ton paper weight.

somehow i can see this turning out to be my fault in someway, it usually does, or whoever is on shift at the time.

so, looks like in on sweeping duties for the next week or so

 

[500e]

Why is it people abuse machinery, to their disadvantage in long term, higher scrap rate, bigger maintenance cost, more downtime, + less profit & unhappy end-user still what do I know only managed 51 years in business & still solvent.
Strange you should mention this as I was talking to another CNC operator with the same problem.
Co just spent £ on new mill with all the gismos including warm up program, but she was told not to run it as it wastes leccy & time, Rep has explained it cuts maintenance & increases accuracy but there you go.
She says if she sets the program running as soon as she gets in & then sorts the days work, material & jobs it wastes about 5 minutes

 

[daleyd]

In my previous job I mainly worked in the printing industry (Magazines, newspapers) and as the machinery got wider & faster everything needed to be "just so" to run at full speed. (Paper quality, chemistry of the ink/water, temperature/humidity etc)

We often had cases where the print machine supervisor would run the machine at say 40,000 copies/hr over the weekend and have no stoppages and hence get loads of work out.

The bosses would come in on Monday morning, say "This machine is capable of 50,000 copies/hr, I want it to run at full speed, make it so", they would crank the speed up and have breakage after breakage, each one taking an hour to recover from, causing massive losses in productivity.

Then they complained about not getting enough productivity from the machine - !!!aaarrrrghhhh

 

[BrokenBiker]

i had a text earlier off the guy on mornings, the fanuc drive is fried, and the motor is goosed. Ah well, i doubt they will learn from this

 

[Cyberprog]

It's like this in every business mate. Where I work I've been banging on about needing a new server, asked a year ago to get 2 new machines, to split the tasks up, got one machine, but had to continue with the other. Now I've finally got the second of the machines which is lucky as the old machine started dying on us on Monday!

 

[Specialist]

Really, why bother? I gave up a long time ago. Everybody abuses their machines until they are a pile of smoking scrap, then they toss it away and buy another one. The reality is they do not know any better, they do not want to know any better, and in the end, they do not care. It makes money for the owner of the Co, and as long as it can make more money for them, who cares if it dies? It has probably paid itself off many times over, so they will get another one to abuse. We, as mostly reasonable people have the ethics to use our tools responsibly and sensibly, while those that have too much money look upon all things as being disposable. They think they will just buy another one and thats it. A mindset that really I do not like at all, but it is what it is.

 

[tlovatt]

The economics often dictates that you push machinery and run it into the ground then buy a new one / repair as needed. As an engineer it is sad to see, but the competitive market and the need to generate a profit normally dictate the profit.

 

[daleyd]

I understand the need to make a profit, but when it actually becomes counter productive to hammer the ass out of a machine and yet management still insist on doing it, that's when it gets frustrating!

We even gave them data showing if they run slightly slower the throughput over a 24 hour period was greater than if they ran flat out - fell on deaf ears! You can't argue with data, unless your a manager, apparently.

 

[BrokenBiker]

we have proved time and tie again that if we slow the cycle time down by 5 seconds, we still make the same amount of parts per shift, but we change the tips less often, the machine holds a better tolerance, gives a better finish and doesn't require as much maintenance, but everytime they find out we have turned the speeds down they come back and turn them back up even though they are still getting the same numbers out every shift.

im fed up of telling them, just run them and wait for them to go bang, tell maintenance and leave it to them. just really annoyed me last night that after telling them so many times what would happen, they ignored us and now it has happened. not looking forward to going in tonight to find out what bull the engineers have fed management to keep them quiet

 

[rich the mechanic]

I have a similar problem that the managment seem to thing that a erganomic work flow is not needed and insist on things being their way so I walk 7 or 8 times across the workshop to do a job I could do in 2 when it was setup my way.

 

[Rig Pig]

That's just daft flogging good equipment! That's the problem with employing non technical people as managers.

 

[brightspark]

That's just daft flogging good equipment! That's the problem with employing non technical people as managers.

thats why useless blokes allways get promotion and not the good guys

 

[BrokenBiker]

we have a system in place in work where the eager will always do better than the qualified, or at least that's how it seems anyway

 

[dannyp]

seen it with pump motors as well, used to look after a pair of them that were run quite steady and they racked up the hours with nothing more than routene serviceing. new manager and everything had to be done now. so everythign eneded up getting turned up to 11 to try and make up time lost from the last thing that went wrong.

stuff keeps going wrong because it's been thrashed, so everyone has to down tools on the job they are doing to fix it, so then everyone else it behind so haveing to trash the rest of the kit then that breacks. usally at some point there is a massive bang. managment rock up 10 minutes later to see why everyone is standing about looking at the unfixable

 

[Farside]

I generalise...
Most of the problems of this ilk I see are caused by eejits who have a management qualification or a bull**** degree of some sort and almost no real hard hands-on experience like managers used to have.
One of the best factory managers I ever knew was a bloke who started on the floor, welding, eventually became top dog in the place and knew every wrinkle and twist and didn't take the ****, expecting the impossible. He was also the most productive person I've ever known in that position - people would do things for him they wouldn't do for anyone else, most especially the snot-nosed wet-behind-the-ears junior 'engineers' with their fresh bits of paper, who used to run around telling people what to do.
I laughed at them.

Mod; edited for language, keep it clean please.

 

[vbottles]

Would it help if you used manager speak in these reports using "cost benefit analysis" or similar jargon? I can't think if you spoke to the owner/share holder about how much longer this machine COULD have run ACCURATELY "IF" run at a lower duty cycle?
As an example how many managers drive to work in a company car where they go near to or over 70 mph? Point out that they are asking these machines to be a LIKE a fiat 500 on a motorway doing 80mph all day! It's possible, BUT. Would they drive to EVERY WHERE including weekends with their cars?
I'm sure I'm preaching to the converted but there always seems to be a disconnect between Directors/shareholders (who pays for stuff) and middle managers (forced to make stuff earn) and workers (make stuff work WHICH MAKEs THE MONEY). Middle managers don't care for shortened life of tooling! IF it matters there out of there before its an issue. Directors/shareholders in"an ideal world" should respond to cost benefit analysis! But if it doesn't get to the TOP in a format they understand it may go unnoticed.
BUT how much will it cost to replace these machines? I can't see these being cheap. It "MIGHT" be an opportunity to point out how using at a lower duty cycle (meeting production quotes) would save £x amount.
IF speed is THAT important(?) when can they install a second machine to improve productivity? Two machines would provide continuous supply "with increased work life and possible tooling breakage saving etc.
Andrew
p.s, I know I'm talking to the converted but needed to rant after a beer+.

 

[optima21]

many years ago I used to work at a engineering company that manufactured metal pressings, they had a "maintenace" man who looked after the machinery, but he was known as the breakdown crew, as the only time the got any maintenance was once they had broken down.......the irony is that the directors all had their cars serviced and maintained to the manufactures guides, yet the machinery which generated the company its income was badly neglected......its not a suprise that manufacturing was on a downward spiral for many years

 

[Farside]

When I was servicing lift trucks for a living, I used to be sent into various manufacturing plants that used to have dedicated maintenance workshops for their trucks. These 'shops had been closed and it was like walking into ghost 'shops where all the useful stuff was done, and nobody there at all. The trucks had to be serviced, of course, so my company were contracted in to do the work. On paper, to somebody, it made sense to pay off the in-house techs and contract in as needed, but we were quite an expensive crowd and it was apparent that despited doing all we could for the budget we were allowed, the general state of the lift truck fleet was slowly going downhill.
Utterly stupid - saving a few quid to cost a lot.

 

[BrokenBiker]

we have an in house guy that is supposed to service the trucks. unfortunately we have just bought a new batch of trucks for our 'big move' (moving all the machine 800 yards to the other side of the factory) and the new supplier is refusing to let us service them with out own guy