August 2007 Edition

LETTERS

Letters to the Editor

This section of MAN is an open forum for debate and opinion. We welcome responses to our articles and columns and strive to print them.

Workholding Survey Feedback

I was surprised – but then after some consideration, not so surprised – at the results of the workholding survey [June 2007, Vol. 41, No. 6, “MAN 2007 Workholding Survey Results,” p. 28]

Some questions should have been poised around the control factor of purchasing: direct responsibility of part quality, programming, etc.

These are variables that affect adoption of high-quality products. A shop foreman isn’t going to walk into the boss’ or owner’s office and request $80,000 for a new set of high-end fixtures for one machine. America’s pursuit of “tried and true” isn’t based on delivering top quality. It’s based on not spending money; not cutting into the bottom line. Let’s face it, manufacturing in America is still on the fence regarding survival. Not every shop has liquidity in jobs. Any guy can buy a machine for $50,000. That same guy isn’t going to look at fixtures that cost as much or more than his machine, regardless of what anyone tells him.

I know I’m a rare case, but I was raised in New England with the same mindset to spend as little as possible and make it work. It was a good foundation for me to develop the skills and knowledge I have today. But it was a path to nowhere if I stayed on that course.

“Spend as little as possible” was my mindset seven years ago with my first CNC mill: “let’s get a vise.”

Not just any vise, a sub-$400 vise. It was a good vise, but limited production capability.

After socking away some profit, I bought others. These doubled productivity, but brought new dilemmas: part slippage due to the floating clutch, and finding the balance between holding parts without crushing them. I sold those along with the cheaper ones first purchased.

For production, my purchase was a set of quality base rails. That was a $40,000 investment. From $5,000 for a few lower-end vises to $40,000 for a six-pack of four-position rails is a big jump.

Since I’m the product designer, programmer, and machinist, it was my choice and responsibility to find a better method of production. Those rails increased production eight times per cycle.

Later, I traded out the vertical mill for a horizontal mill. That brought with it a whole new workholding situation. For starters, everything is exponentially more expensive.

To get the HMC online as soon as possible, I bought the cheapest tombstones I could find, slapped on some vises, and got back online. We only have room for one milling machine in our shop, so I had to find a buyer for the existing machine and balance the delivery of the HMC with the sale of the VMC. We were down for 18 days during the transition.

The only way I could maximize production and part integrity was to develop my own custom fixtures – which I’m currently in the process of doing – in combination with an assortment of clamps. Slowly, we’re machining custom fixtures to match the first custom robot due to arrive in late September or October. In between fixture building, I machine product inventory for sale.

One thing I’ve noticed about every ad for workholding is they always show the part being cut in first operation [from a square block], the net shape having some compound curves. No one ever shows you how the heck you’re going to hold the part for second op. Very few “real” parts are plain squares, at least in aerospace. This is the real challenge for workholding products in the real world of making parts.

Back to the survey. It’s not so much about tried-and-true, as much as it is about money-out-of-pocket. That’s the major factor in tool selection and purchasing in America. I’m told every day how unusual I am for being an American and wanting the best equipment to produce the best parts as fast as possible without hiring more people.

One common scenario I see in manufacturing is shops hiring more guys to run more cheap machines when business is good. What happens when the jobs dry up? People lose their jobs.

I’ve learned my lesson about buying cheap tools and used CNCs. Today we’re investing in nothing but state-of-the-art tooling and custom robots to “man” the operations. The business has gone from literally nothing to $1 million annually. There are still only the two of us full time – myself and my partner – with a part-time assembler whose work will be reduced when another robot arrives.

A result of buying state-of-the-art tooling is that as our materials and tooling cost have increased, our product prices have either stayed the same or decreased in the face of materials costs rising dramatically. For instance, three years ago, our cost for titanium bar was $13 per pound. Today it ranges between $76 to $96 per pound!

Bronze has gone from $3.50 per pound to $8 per pound in the last two years. Aluminum has tripled, and availability has begun to be a problem. I ordered an aluminum tube in January and it arrived in April.

These are huge cost increases to endure and not raise our prices. How can a small American manufacturer go from cheap, used CNCs and tooling and fixtures to the latest in technology, custom robotics, and compete with lower prices with raw materials going through the roof?

I can only attribute my success to investigating and investing in the best technology available.

I wouldn’t be where I’m at today if I had a boss not willing to risk the upfront expense.

So if, in the survey, the question was asked “What would you buy, if money weren’t the number one factor?” I bet the answers might have been slightly different.

I say “slightly” because I know it’s hard for people to envision life without the dollar factor.

By the way, I enjoyed your article about Pierson. You’re an inspiring writer.

Matt St Louis
   Vice President
   Saint Louis Designs, Inc.
   Austin, TX

Buy Foreign; Wound America

Nice article, or should I say, nice try at soothing the guilty consciences of the U.S. businesses that are not buying American.

Let’s use this article [June 2007, Vol. 41, No. 6, The Last Word, “Forget Outsourcing, the Issue is Insourcing,” p.50] as a reference and fast forward 20 years: there are no U.S. companies making machining equipment, all are foreign owned. Maybe some Americans have jobs putting together these machines but the bulk of the profit goes out of the U.S. There is less demand for machine work in the U.S. because there are no machines made here. Work to make components for new machines is down.

It gets worse. That sound you hear, like water going down a drain, is the sound of cash flowing out of the country.

Take a trip to Germany and see first hand the national pride in buying German products. Even if a TV or DVD player is more expensive and has fewer features, the Germans still buy them to keep the guy next door in a job. So the guy next door can buy his weekly German magazine, printed in the German printing plant, that buys the German printing press, made using German machine tools, and sold by the guy who bought the TV and DVD player. And, on it goes.

Disrupt that balance and soon that guy can’t buy the magazine and circulation goes down, the plant doesn’t need the new high-speed press, and the machine tool manufacturer doesn’t sell the new equipment to the press manufacturer because they don’t sell as many presses.

They lay off you, the guy who thought it was okay to buy that Japanese or Chinese TV and DVD player.

“How does one guy make a difference?” you ask.

If you have to ask that, you probably don’t see the need to vote either.

It goes on until we are the cheap labor force of the world. We finally start to buy our own goods but only because we learned our lesson, or because we became the new third world country and our products are cheaper than foreign ones because our economy is in the tank with more businesses foreign-owned than locally-owned.

Is Kevin Bevan happy now? You ask him and listen to him explain this away, because I’m not interested in his opinion.

Dan Preiss
    Service Manager
    Max Daetwyler Corp.
    Huntersville, NC

To contribute your thoughts and ideas, e-mail the editor, Pete Nofel, at pnofel@nelsonpub.com, or write him at Modern Applications News, 6001 Cochran Road, Suite 104, Solon OH 44139. We verify all letters considered for publication, so be sure to include your telephone number. All submissions are subject to editing for space, editorial specifications, and decorum.

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