Those who walk through the doors of the Partners in THINC facility have a world of manufacturing opportunities open before their eyes. Located in Charlotte, North Carolina, the 57,000-square-foot facility is a breeding ground for collaborative ideas and applied solutions supported by the latest Okuma America Corporation CNC machines equipped with the open-architecture THINC-OSP Control.

“When you walk into Partners in THINC, you’ll feel like a kid in a candy store,” says Jeff Estes, Partners in THINC director. “No where else do you have the opportunity to see and talk to representatives of 25 distinctive companies whose prime focus is to create and offer solutions to manufacturers.”
Partners in THINC facility
The Partners in THINC facility bears the names of all Partners on the building, each sharing equal billing.

From ABB to Zoller, the 25 industry-leading partners share office space under one roof. Nine resident partners are onsite full-time and all 25 have committed sales and engineering resources a minimum of three times a week. True partners in this endeavor, each of their company logos shares equal billing on the outer wall at the facility’s entrance, Okuma among them.

Okuma realized it could not be everything to every customer. Its machine tools provide one piece of the manufacturing puzzle, but it takes all areas of manufacturing to come together, including tooling, workholding, software and systems integration, to create a complete solution. Okuma had the good intentions, but it didn’t have the resources. It did, however, have the right industry contacts, which allowed it to proceed with building the partnerships that exist today. In breaking new ground with the Partners in THINC concept, the intellectual powers now collected under one roof can more efficiently provide innovative solutions for the manufacturing industry.

“We share ideas and concepts between Partner and Partner, building relationships by using talents, skills and products while bringing otherwise competitor companies together for the sake of the manufacturer,” Mr. Estes says.

These “competitors” come together in one location to share information about their products and technologies that is then applied to the Partners in THINC shop floor and the customer’s facility. The THINC-OSP control is the conduit for sharing this information. The Partners openly discuss customer issues to determine how best they can develop an integrated solution using the open-architecture THINC-OSP control as their common interface. The THINC-OSP control allows various types of equipment to seamlessly exchange data in real time via an Ethernet connection. It also enables plug-and-play integration of new equipment. Users benefit by gaining systems and processes that are not only easier to use, but result in increased productivity and decreased manufacturing costs.

Partners in THINC is not just a research and development facility per se. It’s also a fully functional production facility. The “secret” to development is that real needs and real ideas have to be economically feasible and marketable to a wide range of customers that use Okuma equipment. This is why the shop floor is producing customer parts that are being purchased while the manufacturing solutions are proven out.
Eight to 12 machining demonstrations
Eight to 12 machining demonstrations are running at any given time on the Partners in THINC shop floor.

At any given time in the facility there are eight to twelve machines in operation on the shop floor producing parts for actual customers. These machines are representative of what Okuma customers are using every day in their facilities. In fact, customers can send part specifications and workpiece samples to the facility to allow Partners in THINC to help develop an efficient manufacturing process. Customers can then visit the facility to see the results or just experience new technology they can implement. After a process is optimized, it can be integrated into a customer’s production scheme in a minimal amount of time.

RCR’s Impressions
Richard Childress Racing (RCR) has been an Okuma customer and technology partner since 2001. Rick Grimes, RCR manufacturing manager, and his co-workers, Bobby Hutchens, vice president of research & development, Spenny Clendenen, business manager for RCR Engines, and Rod Bryant, manufacturing supervisor, were some of the many visitors to Partners in THINC after its launch in April 2007. The men spent the better part of a day touring the facility and watching their engine and chassis parts being produced on the machines. They were impressed with the experience and the results of the Partners in THINC collaborations.

“Okuma and the Partners in THINC have enabled our company, and can enable other companies, to see and purchase a manufacturing system designed and conditioned specifically for their product by the component suppliers,” Mr. Grimes says. “Typically companies like ours have to research, purchase and integrate the separate components themselves. I have not come across anyone else in the marketplace that offers such a one-stop-shop-type scenario.”
discussing manufacturing solutions
Partners in THINC’s Jeff Estes (left) and RCR’s Rick Grimes discuss manufacturing solutions for race components on the floor of the new facility.

Mr. Grimes believes that other industries may create such partnerships but, historically, it hasn’t happened with machine tools. “In this industry you have machine tool and auxiliary equipment companies who partner with specific vendors for components,” Mr. Grimes explains. “At the Partners in THINC facility, they all come together under one roof.”

The representatives of RCR were especially impressed with how the Zoller presetter and Kennametal ToolBoss tool crib/inventory management system communicate directly with the Okuma machine through the THINC-OSP control. “We are taking the necessary steps to incorporate this technology into our manufacturing facility,” Mr. Grimes says. “Such a capability will allow us to reduce setup time, which will increase machine up-time and positively impact our ability to turn product quickly. For our business, quick turnaround is a must.”

A Place To Share Ideas And Create Solutions
The Partners in THINC facility includes a high-tech auditorium with stadium-style seating and premium audio/video equipment for presentations. However, the biggest plus in having this auditorium is that it provides an environment where the Partners can sit, listen and talk directly with customers. Mr. Estes says it’s all about communication and partnerships, not sales pitches.

“The Partners in THINC facility is not here to push or make sales, but the Partners do assist in the sales process by offering more data and thoroughly explaining applications to the customers,” says Mr. Estes. “We want the customers to feel comfortable about asking questions–what did they see and what do they need—so that we can tailor solutions that are effective and affordable for them.”
The lobby
The lobby includes Partner information, sample parts and an RCR engine.

Within a transition area between the facility’s demo room and lobby, visitors can see the four stages of the manufacturing process—pre-planning, machining, metrology and service. This area also displays featured Partner products and technologies as well as explanations about how they fit within the Partners in THINC concept. There are also interesting sample parts, graphic displays and a complete RCR engine.

“We have a different strategy than most companies,” Mr. Estes says. “We see Okuma machines as company assets. They are well-suited for multiple applications and have the flexibility to move and change based on customers’ changing needs. Partners see value in a machine tool company that offers a true open-architecture control and an application programming interface (API) to share data and communicate with other equipment, and Okuma did it.

“Partners interface with us, allowing us to provide complete solutions and offer lower costs so manufacturers can be competitive with countries all over the world,” Mr. Estes continues. “We can only do that by partnering with other technology leaders and together creating a huge engineering staff to bring the solutions to our customers.”

Partners in THINC is more than just a facility, it’s a concept for the present and future of manufacturing. As customers and Partners alike experience the capabilities of the THINC-OSP control, the possibilities for plug-and-play application solutions become virtually endless. This facility finally brings customers closer to a “total” solution on their factory floor than any other place in the world. This allows them to be more competitive both locally and globally.

This article series is not a comprehensive explanation of manufacturing equipment, but a once-over-lightly discussion of how the major chipmaking machine tools, and supporting elements function. We hope they will help two groups of people: The first consists of recent manufacturing engineering graduates who might need more information about the tools of their trade. The second group are those who have worked in nonmanufacturing fields, but are transferred to a position of responsibility in manufacturing, and find themselves challenged when it comes to knowledge of industry basics.

Turning, drilling, and milling are the three basic manufacturing techniques that use a tool to remove metal. Recently there has been a move to multitasking machine tools in which a single machine performs all three functions, plus grinding in some cases. These multifunction machines can work on a variety of parts and carry out more operations in a single setup. Despite this blurring of distinctions among machine tools the basic operations are still unchanged.

THE BIG THREE: Milling

This process uses the relative motion between a rotating, multiedge cutter and a workpiece to generate both flat and curved surfaces. During rotation, each tooth of the cutter alternately enters and leaves the cut, removing small amounts of material (chips). Called interrupted cutting, it results in more mechanical shock to the part and tool than occurs with continuous cutting, which is characteristic of turning.

Milling is done by a variety of machines. Simple stand-alone machines perform a minimal number of functions and are chiefly used in job shops. Machining centers have a wider variety of tools and sometimes have additional live spindles for drilling, turning, and even grinding. Milling functions can also be a major part of transfer lines. In these high-volume applications milling is often simple and repetitive.

The capabilities of a milling machine or machining center are measured by motor horsepower, maximum spindle speed, spindle taper size (which determines the size of the toolholder and tool), worktable size, and the amount of cutting tool travel.

Much toolmaking, prototype machining, and low-volume milling machining is done on small, lightweight, vertical spindle ram-type machines called knee mills. They are rarely used for production work.

This design includes a knee-and-column support for the machine table, hence the name, “knee mill.” Base and column are one piece and the knee travels vertically on the column. The knee supports the saddle and table. The saddle moves in-and-out from the column, and the table moves side-to-side.

The ram atop the column supports the head and provides horizontal motion in-and-out from the column, parallel to the saddle movement.

At the front of the ram is the milling head, with motor, toolhead, speed-and-feed controls, quill, and spindle. The nonrotating quill holds the rotating spindle and allows the spindle to be fed on its own axis. Tilting the spindle axis allows milling or drilling at an angle to the table. Cutting tools are held in drill chucks or in collets, that are, in turn, held in the spindle, or mounted directly in the spindle.

On manual mills, the operator sets the machine parameters for each cut, positions the tool for the start of the cut, directs all of the machine’s motions manually, and changes the settings and tools after each operation.

The two main types of machining centers are the vertical spindle machining center (VMC) and the horizontal spindle machining center (HMC). A third, less– common type is the universal machine, which is capable of both vertical and horizontal spindle orientations.

Verticals may be preferred over HMCs when working primarily on a single work face. When a rotary table or indexer is added to the VMC machine table, more than one side of a workpiece or a multiple-part setup can be machined without operator intervention. Rotary devices either index the part to present a new work surface to the spindle, or they rotate it slowly, under full CNC control, while it’s machined.

There are the three linear axes:

X defines side-to-side table motion,

Y defines in-and-out table motion,

Z defines head movement up and down the column,

B and C may be added as rotary axes, usually as a rotating spindle or mounting table.

T-slots in the machine table are still the primary means of holding work and workholding devices to a machining center table.

Because an HMC’s spindle is orientated horizontally, it may be preferred for heavy, boxy parts. Chips fall out of the way better on a horizontal machine, and more workholding and automation options may be possible than on a vertical machine.

The HMC table typically rotates to expose four sides of the workpiece, or fixture, to the tools.

Tombstones, commonly used on HMCs, come in a wide variety of configurations to hold multiple parts. The part program is written to machine all parts on the tombstone before shuttling it out of the machine.

On a universal mill, the work-pieces on the table may be addressed by a vertically oriented or a horizontally oriented spindle. The combination of tilts and swivels available in the spindles and tables allow the workpieces to be addressed at various compound angles.

If you’re like most machine shops, you want to cut faster and hold better accuracy on your machining centers-without having to invest much money. Well, the means for doing just that could already be sitting in your shop. One of the best-kept secrets in the industry is that most modern CNCs contain many performance-enhancing features that builders of general-purpose machines often don’t use. All you need to do is turn them on.

“CNCs have a lot of capability that’s not taken advantage of,” says Bill Griffith, CNC product manager, GE Fanuc Automation North America Inc. (Charlottesville, VA). “You can hire a service engineer to set them up for you. Sometimes maintenance engineers learn about some features in the training classes that they take.”

The availability of these performance enhancements varies widely with the make of the CNC and its manufacturer’s marketing strategy. Some manufacturers, for example, activate all of the features that they offer, making them available to users from the outset to avoid “optioning” them to death. You just need to learn to use them. Others, however, price their products based on the active features, requiring their customers to pay only for those features that they use. So if the builder of your machine djd not activate a feature that you might find useful, you will need to buy it.

Although the cost of such features usually runs between $900 and $2000 each, it varies by manufacturer and type of feature. Sometimes the purchase is simply a matter of giving the CNC manufacturer your credit card number over the phone, and receiving an activation code that you punch into the CNC. Other times, however, a technician needs to come to the machine to activate and tune the feture, and perhaps even load a missing piece of software. In these cases, you’ll need to add the cost of the service call, which usually requires from a few hours to a day.

Keep in mind, however, that using these hidden features isn’t always just a matter of turning them on. Sometimes there is a tuning, or commissioning, process. Other times, you need to tweak cutting programs and internal software to account for the changes made by a feature. “You have to be aware of what you are doing to enhance your machine, because it might affect how the machine will operate,” says Christian Kuhls, CNC product manager, Siemens Energy and Automation Inc. (Elk Grove Village, IL).

An example is the motion-synchronous actions, or synchronized actions, feature in Siemens’ CNCs. This feature allows users to program instructions-such as sending output of auxiliary functions to the PLC, writing and reading of real-time variables, making on-line tool offsets, taking measurements, and calculating of function values-that are processed synchronously with the interpolation cycle. The goal is to complete tasks or to provide data in time for use. Since you integrate these actions into the machine and coordinate them with the tool motion, you might need to adjust them if any features change the machine.

To help users sort through the various features that are hiding in the CNG and to decide which would boost the performance of their machines the most, GE Fanuc’s Griffith suggests organizing them into a kind of hierarchy-one that puts sound mechanics at the base. Although software and electronics might mask some mechanical defects, they cannot make an unsound machine sound. The hierarchy then builds on the base of sound mechanics, beginning with servo and positioning adjustments, continuing with features that enhance the machine’s acceleration (and deceleration, which is nothing more than negative acceleration) and programming, and ending with those that add functionality to the machine.

At the lowest level, adjusting servo and positioning parameters, the first order of business is tuning the velocity loop. The process involves determining the natural frequency of the machine, which tells you the performance limits of the machine and lets you set resonance filters, velocity loop gain, feed-forward coefficient, and position gain accordingly. GE Fanuc has software called Servo Guide that leads users through this initial tuning process.

“Servo-tuning functions like feed-forward control are in every CNC, but aren’t always used,” says Griffith. “The feed-forward function more or less skips the position loop and sends the command directly to the velocity loop of the servo system.” By bypassing the slower position loop, the feature hastens the CNC’s response to any deviations from the programmed toolpath, allowing the machine to react to corners and contours much faster. Consequently, feed-forward control reduces any position errors that would result from servo-processing delays when cutting at high feed rates.

A feature called nanometer command interpolation allows Fanuc CNCs to send commands to the servo system in increments that are a thousand times smaller than before. These tiny, nanometer-size command increments not only improve accuracy by moving rounding error to smaller decimal places, but also make acceleration smoother, which allows you to cut at faster rates.