Automation investment

The company's first Workpal, installed in 2008 to feed an Agie Progress V2 wire machine has proved to be so successful that GB director Paul Turner was convinced to purchase another – this time to feed one of his three Agie Hyperspark Exact machines.

“The EDM section of our shopfloor has been completely palletised for some time, and the system also extends into many of our other machining areas,” Mr Turner explains. “Because we have always fixtured pallets with the maximum number of component positions, and because most of the parts we manufacture are complex and relatively small, we have up to now obtained maximum automation benefit through the carefully organised loading of parts onto each pallet.

“In this way we can create separate pallets with time cycles to suit staff availability when manual pallet changes are required.”

However, even this level of pre-planned production has its drawbacks – for example, the pallets must be timed to finish when there is someone onsite, even if that is over a weekend. Also, it can be difficult to structure pallets with convenient run times – they may need to be started early in the morning if they are to complete within the working day. Furthermore several pallets cannot be timed to finish at the same time as an operator cannot be in two places at once, and sometimes pallet runs may be very short, all of which leads to lost machining time and reduced productivity.

One way or another the palletisation cannot always be arranged optimally, which is why GB Precision bought the second robot, as a dedicated resource to feed one machine while the other two continue to be fed by the organised palletised system – providing the best of both worlds.

The productivity of the Agie wire machine has also increased as all measuring activity can now take place offline, freeing up significant additional machining time and resulting in shorter leadtimes for customers.

In addition to increasing productivity on the shopfloor, the Workpal pallet changer also provides additional benefits including: its very small footprint, making it easy to integrate into a highly structured workflow environment, and sliding door access across the full width of one side, giving maximum access to the magazine and greatly facilitating the ease of loading and unloading pallets.

GB Precision
www.gbprecision.co.uk