Hardinge QUEST Turning Centers Increase Productivity for Grauch Enterprises

"I have had machines that you have to take half the machine apart just to get to something you need to look at," said Fred Grauch, Grauch Enterprises owner. "But the Hardinge QUEST turning centers have plenty of space, they are designed to be accessible for set-up, operation and maintenance. Plus, they have lightening-fast indexing speeds and the rapid traverse rates, which combined deliver time from cut to turn, or from tool to cut, in the blink of an eye. So fast, in fact, that our shop foreman jumped five feet when she saw the first QUEST running. She thought it was going to crash, like a train wreck. We did not have anything that fast here. The rapids on the QUESTs are twice as fast as anything we have here."

Grauch said his shop does just about everything - milling, turning, drilling, plastic injection molding, painting and finishing. Materials include a full line of plastics (ABS, nylon, polycarbonates, laminates) and metals (brass, aluminum, stainless steel, alloy steels, titanium, inconel, beryllium, copper, copper-alloy castings, cast aluminum and common cast iron).

"There is very little we won't try, especially since we have received our two newest multitasking turning centers, a Hardinge QUEST 6/45 CNC and a Hardinge Super-Precision QUEST 10/65, from the Hardinge Group, Inc.," said Grauch. "The guys at Hardinge say these QUESTs will do hard turning, run right through fully hardened material, and I have no doubt that these 'bad boys' will do it. We just have not had the need to turn hardened materials - yet."

Grauch said he got the QUEST Super-Precision 10/65 first, followed within six months by an 'unplanned' QUEST 6/45: "Most of our parts are an inch in diameter or smaller," he said. "The QUEST Super-Precision 10/65 goes up to 2.935" through the spindle and that really increased our capability compared to our gang-style tooling, which is 1.065". Even the QUEST 6/45 goes up to 1.625". So both machines have really increased out ability to do larger diameters."

Typical machined parts produced at Grauch Enterprises include more than 650 different items for the United States Department of Defense (DOD). They are all called 'knobs' for one reason or another. The part used to justify the QUEST Super-Precision 10/65 is actually a switch bolt for a 'Ma Duce' M2 .50 (12.7 mm) caliber World War II era automatic, tripod- or vehicle-mounted, belt-fed, recoil operated, air-cooled machine gun. The switch bolt technically is a 'miscellaneous' part, but someone thought it looked like a knob and put it on the DOD parts list under 5355 (knobs).

Grauch also does commercial products: "Empire Abrasives is a large customer," Grauch said, "a manufacturer of commercial sandblasting equipment. We handle 90 percent of their machined parts. We also do terminals for lead acid batteries for locomotives and battery-operated fork trucks. Also we have done our share of parts for bicycles, cars, and custom-made parts. But most of our work is 'knobs' for the DOD."

When asked about volumes, he took out a calculator and, in a matter of moments, said, "188,943 parts generating over $2 million, sales from September '06 to September '07. And it is the two Hardinge QUESTs turning out most of those parts, and they are hungry for more."

Why Hardinge?
"We have always had Hardinge machines," Grauch said, "and we have found that their service and parts have always been readily available. We talked to them at the '06 Chicago IMTS show, and when we first showed the switch bolt to the Hardinge engineers, saying this is what we want to make on the QUEST Super-Precision 10/65. They said, 'Well, this part utilizes everything on our machine, which includes the C-axis, the Y-axis, X/Y combination, C/Y combination, the sub-spindle, the live tooling, everything. We haven't seen something like this in a long time. It's going to be a challenge'."

Actual cycle time: eight minutes. This is a good thing, as the DOD ordered more than 9,000 of the switch bolts. The second "unplanned" machine arrived within six to eight months of the first. This came about because when they received the QUEST Super-Precision 10/65, they were running parts for government approval. Out of nowhere, Grauch received an order for 5,000 parts, due in two months. And not just routine parts, but assemblies, meaning that each part was actually a number of parts. The reality: 20,000 individual parts.

"So I thought, if we run the QUEST Super-Precision 10/65 at night on these parts," Grauch said, "I could really use another QUEST to do the assembly job and all my other parts. I talked to Brian Ferguson, our Hardinge representative, and said I might be interested in a second QUEST. Due to the size, quantity and complexity of the smaller parts he recommended the QUEST 6/45. And since he understood our need to run shifts through the night, he suggested we automate the machine with a bar feed, touch probe and tool probe. No more than a month later we decided to automate our first QUEST in the same manner.

"So now we have matching systems, and can interchange between the two. The QUEST Super-Precision 10/65 is a super precision machine for the switch bolt job, which we run at nights as well as during the day. The QUEST 6/45 runs days and some nights and handles all of our other parts. Now I look back and say, 'How did I run this place without these machines?'"

Long Runs/Short Runs
"As time goes, I can see Grauch Enterprises slowly replacing all of our gang-style machines with Hardinges," Grauch said. "I can see replacing two or three with a single Hardinge."

When he started out the Omni Turns weren't bad machines for what they could do, Grauch said. The company converted some of the Hardinge manual lathes with the conversion kits sold by Omni Turn. That stepped them into the CNC world. The gang-style machines worked great for small, quick runs and things like that. But, once the operator has the tools in and pushes "Run," the parts just fly off the Hardinges, complete.

Grauch reports that for his company a small run is 1,500 pieces and a longer run may be 10,000 parts.

Right now, to be cost effective, they are doing all of their long runs on the new Hardinges. "We write the programs, run them for a couple weeks, and have made 5,000 to 10,000 parts. Eventually, our intent is to put shorter run jobs on the machines because changeover is so short - a matter of just changing the tools if necessary," he said.

"We have designated certain tools in certain areas, so the changeover is not that long at all," Grauch said. "Even if we had to change the entire turret and all the tools, the touch probe for the tooling let's you just touch them off, and you are done. It's so fast, it's phenomenal."

Probes/Inspection
Grauch said that his two QUESTs each have two probes. One, the tool probe, mounts on the wall of the machine near the spindle. When you load up all of your tooling, you move the turret back out of the way. Then the touch probe comes down and you manually extend the turret and touch the C and X positions. That information is loaded directly into the GE Fanuc control, and the machine now knows where each tool is. Then, just index around and touch off all of the tools in about five minutes. Changeover is completed in 15 minutes to a half an hour.

"The second probe, the part probe, is used specifically on the .50 caliber switch bolt," Grauch said. "We are planning on running this at night in addition to during the day, and we have sub-programs where the part probe mounts on the turret and the turret will come every so many parts, say 20, and it will touch the turned areas where we are trying to hold to 0.001" in alloy steel. It will adjust the offsets in the machine to hold that tolerance, and as we get into production, we can check every 10 parts or five parts - every part, if we want - and the probe will tell us if we need to make an adjustment. It is all in the programming. During the day, if we have all of your personnel tied up watching other machines, an operator can load the program that does self-inspection - and the QUEST will inspect itself. But, the main reason we have the part probe is to run the QUEST Super-Precision 10/65 at night, when there is no one here, lights out, and it just runs very, very precise parts."

QUEST Call Home
"We are shooting to hold 0.0005", ± 0.00025", on the .50 caliber switch bolt," said Grauch, "which will be assured by the part probe, and the redundant tooling we've installed. The QUEST will adjust x-number of times, and after so many cycles, the turning tool will have worn the edge, for example. The program will now load redundant tooling, and instead of using position One, it will now index to position Five. Whatever tool wears, the QUEST will keep running because it will switch and start using redundant tooling. That same process will repeat x-number of times, and when it continues to go to another tool or shuts down, the machine will make a phone call to say, 'I need your attention'."

Grauch said they can put enough material in the bar feed to run for about 48 hours. If something happens - the feeder runs out of material, or the probe determines the machine is not holding tolerance, the machine will stop and make a call.

"This is all done in the background, in the programming. What will happen," Grauch said, "is that whatever the problem, it will trip the emergency stop relay. There is a device that can be purchased that hooks up to a phone and your number is programmed into the system. So when the machine gets an error code and shuts down, the relay is tripped and the machine calls the pre-programmed number of whoever is on call. This doesn't happen very often and gives us complete confidence to load up the QUEST Super-Precision 10/65 and let her work all night."

Turning the Switch Bolt (or Knob)
Grauch explained the milling sequence. The bar feed feeds material to a given length. They use a roughing tool to rough the front end because the bar feed leaves about 0.010" to 0.020" to clean up the front finish. Then they'll rough down the outside diameter and taper to the back smaller diameter.

Next is the slot. It is angled on each end, so it is actually doing a Z-axis/Y-axis move: As it is coming from front to rear, it is also moving out, going straight across and then going back in. The mill slot through the front is what actually guides the bolt action loading the ammunition.

Next switch tools and come in with a parting tool and groove out the backside of the part, making it smaller than the front side. Then they spot and drill the locating holes with the same drill, which are opposite one another. (Depending on which hole is used to locate the switch bolt determines which side the ammunition feeds through the machine gun, allowing them to be mounted side by side.) A milling operation from the top (X-axis) angles the two sides followed by a radial operation down those sides to allow grease to move through. The part now has two angles on the front edge. A finish turn cleans the front side and turns the tight outside diameter. Then the process actually goes back with a 45-degree six-blade chamfer tool, and chamfers (deburrs) all the edges. It spots and drills a through hole. Next it finishes hogging out the backside and puts in a radius.

The part is now ready to be finished on the sub-spindle. Before this can happen the last part still in the sub-spindle is removed by a robot arm that comes out, lifts up, the sub-spindle then moves forward. The arm grabs the part, and drops the finished part on a conveyor belt, which carries it to a parts bucket. This is before the sub-spindle picks up the next piece. It is in the middle of the program for the next switch bolt that the finished part is removed from the machine.

Just a Little Over Eight Minutes, Start to Finish
The sub spindle again comes up and grabs the next piece, and the machine parts it off. Then it spots the back of all three holes and then reams the two locating holes 0.201", ±0.0002", finally facing off the second tight tolerance diameter.

"But the really nice thing, and this is why I love these machines, there are many times when you think you are going to have four or five processes," Grauch said, "and you start with one process and get to the last process, and say, 'We should have done this as the first step because its effecting the last step.' Using this program, the part is done. If there is something that is just not right, you know it right away, because you have a finished part. You are not finding out after you have made 5,000 parts that there is a better way to do the first operation. With the QUEST Super-Precision 10/65 you can tweak the process, the sequence, as the part runs."

The part starts off as 2.000" bar stock and when finished, the widest diameter is still 1.811". The two ODs are -0.001", and everything else is 0.005". Hole size is -0.001", and they hold 0.0002"on these two holes by reaming them. But the main tolerances are the two diameters. They fit very snugly into the machine gun.

Grauch: "This is just another reason we went to Hardinge. We knew the capability to do this kind of complex job was there; that they had the engineering depth to know if they could make the part or not. If not, they wouldn't have sold us a machine."

On a Horizontal Note
"I can see getting another QUEST for our three gang-style machines. Especially if we start running 24 hours a day. In that instance, the two QUESTs we have could replace our five gang-style machines," Grauch said, "which has us seriously thinking about getting more private work. The ability to be much more competitive, even globally, is the result of the advanced capabilities of these machines. I know that these two QUESTs alone, the QUEST 6/45 and the QUEST Super-Precision 10/65, have increased our production capabilities tremendously."

Grauch's possible next move might surprise some, even though it's not inconsistent with his current portfolio of customers. "I have another business," he said, "that makes reloading equipment with powder measures. We've been talking to the Hardinge representative Brian about a Brigeport palletized horizontal machining center (Bridgeport is another Hardinge Group brand). At some point in time I can see that horizontal in here turning out those parts with the precise accuracy and repeatability, reliability and breath-taking speed that only the Hardinge Group can deliver."

For more information contact:

Hardinge Inc.

P.O. Box 1507

Elmira, NY 14902-1507

800-843-8801

Fax: 607-734-8819

www.hardinge.com

E-mail: info@hardinge.com