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The Changing Face of Manufacturing Rusty Arant, CEO of Northeast Tool, views automation as a natural evolution of the manufacturing process, enabling companies to reduce the number of hands that touch the part during production, the amount of floor space used, and the time required to go from raw materials to finished parts. Here are a few of his thoughts about how his company's use of automation relates to developments of advanced technology throughout the industry. When I first looked for opportunities to enhance our manufacturing processes with automation, I thought about everyday life and how much robots are already involved. The washing machine and many other household appliances are, essentially, robots. A recent example is the self-driving car. We use these robots to save time and energy that we can apply elsewhere. This is exactly what we need to make our manufacturing processes more efficient. Realizing that automation and other advanced manufacturing technologies were already all around us, I knew that we had to be intentional about implementing automation within our company. :: :: :: :: The automation system consists of one FANUC R- 2000iB/165F six-axis industrial robot positioned in the center of three Okuma LB-3000EX-MY lathes arranged in a semi-circle. range in size from 4 inches in diameter by 3 inches in length, to 8 inches in diameter by 8 inches in length. Rethinking the process from raw material onward led to replacing the raw barstock, which Northeast Tool origi- nally sawed into part lengths, with precut bars bearing part identification codes. e robot employs an end-of- arm tooling-mounted iRVision system to confirm the part identification codes and locate the parts for pickup. An end-of-arm, three-jaw, OD gripper system grips the workpiece on the outside shank diameter for loading and unloading the lathes as well as for placing and removing parts for post-process inspection on a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). All programs for the 17 part numbers reside in the machine tool and are called up by the automation system based on the next part to be processed. In operation, the robot locates the part by using the vision system to identify the 2D bar code. It then loads the part into the first machine tool that performs rough machining, and then moves it from the first machine to the second Okuma lathe, which machines the front side. e third :: The LB-3000EX-MY CNC lathe includes a maximum machining diameter of 16.14 inches and maximum machining length of 19.69 inches. It is designed for accuracy and flexibility, with a ballscrew-driven tailstock and X and Z rapid traverse rates of 984 and 1,181 ipm, respectively. CNC SINGLE-SPINDLE 38 PRODUCTION MACHINING :: NOVEMBER 2016