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Higher spindle utilization means shops are getting more money from their machine tools. To increase this number, shops need to find a way to set up parts while the machine is running. “The setup is where you lose your money,” says Patrick Filipek, an application engineer at Matsuura Machinery USA. “You get no money out of a setup. Some can take an hour, and some can take days.” One easy way to increase spindle uptime is by adding a pallet pool to a machine. With a pallet system, “the machine's spindle never stops running while you're doing work at the workstation by reloading stock or doing a setup of a job. And with large-capacity pallet pools, you can have jobs stored away so the initial set up is already complete, allowing for no wasted setup time,” he adds.

Not only does a pallet pool increase spindle uptime, but it can also increase unattended machining. “Some shops, they'll run up to seven days straight without human interaction,” Filipek notes. “I tell people, this is your night shift, and this is your weekend shift.” This is particularly important in the face of the ongoing skilled worker shortage. “At IMTS, I don't know how many thousands of people I talked to, and it's the same sentence over and over: ‘We can't find any people,’” he adds. “We’ve got to look at ways for the machine to run itself or take the place of one or two people that we'd have to hire.” But to reach these levels of unattended machining, shops need machines and processes that are set up for success.

1. Probing and Laser Systems

Probing and laser systems can be used to detect broken tools and misloaded parts, as well as inspect parts and calculate part and tool offsets. Tool and part data gathered by these systems is stored in the machine using a macro, where it’s used to determine production schedules. When a user starts a pallet schedule, the machines run a pre-check to ensure none of the tools required to machine any of the loaded pallets are broken or expired. “If any status is not good with that pallet, if the probe measures that the part on the pallet is no good, if the tool is broken or if the tool is expired, it will not run the pallet,” Filipek explains. “It flags that pallet so an operator can come and investigate the issue.” Typically, operators can quickly fix these issues (such as tooling or part misloading or measurement errors) and get the pallet back into the schedule so production can continue. In the meantime, the machine will move on to the next pallet in the schedule so it can continue running with no downtime. The pallet pool monitor shows the status of all pallets in the queue, so operators can find and fix any outstanding issues and see current status of the machine with ease.

2. Large Tool Magazine

Large tool magazines to enable users to tool up the machines to run a range of parts, as well as stock up on duplicates (or sisters) of any tools that are prone to breakage. The tool magazine capacity in Matsuura’s machines varies based on the machine model, but ranges to 530 tools. “The tool magazine interfaces right into the tool management system,” Filipek explains. “As soon as the first tool expires or breaks, it knows that the next one's ready to go and it will use the sister tool to continue running, ensuring the machine spindle does not need to stop and wait for human interaction.”

3. Pallets and Fixtures That Hold Multiple Parts

Matsuura also offers a range of pallet pool sizes —pools range from four to 91 pallets, depending on the pallet system model. Users can also move pallets between compatible machines, allowing them to set up and store additional pallets outside of the machine and load them as needed.

But having a certain number of pallets doesn’t necessarily limit users to setting up only that number of parts. Filipek says most Matsuura models have pallets with four usable faces, increasing the possible number of jobs per pallet. “You're not limited to one job per pallet,” he explains. “You could have potentially four separate programs running on one pallet. For example, a machine with 32 pallets could potentially run up to 128 different jobs.”

Pyramid fixtures also enable users of five-axis machines to stack parts on top of each other, like a tombstone. “On a five-axis, palletized machine, we're looking for throughput of finished parts,” he adds, “and fixturing is a big player in how many parts we can stack up and be able to machine multiple sides of the part.”

At the end of the day, pallet systems enable machines to continuously make chips. “It's return on investment the quickest way,” Filipek says. “And it all comes back to spindle utilization.”