Production Machining

FEB 2013

Production Machining - Your access to the precision machining industrial buyer.

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CASE IN POINT :: Wiscon runs square stock for a ballscrew nut. The part starts with a center hole, and runs as fast as 4,000 rpm on the tooling. Zero Defects, Three-Shift Production Edited by Lori Beckman eing competitive these days is essential, yet becoming more difcult. Customer parts are more complex with tighter tolerances. Tey also want cost-efective analysis and competitive pricing, according to Torben Christensen, president of Wiscon Products Inc., Racine, Wisc. To keep up with customer needs, this family owned and operated contract precision machining job shop is aggressively investing in equipment and improving. Tree INDEX multi-spindle CNC lathes and six INDEX C Series automatic lathes occupy the shop foor and all are busy. "We've just had several years of growth, investing more than 30 percent of our total sales in new equipment," Mr. Christensen says. With a highly skilled workforce of 50 employees averaging more than 15 years with Wiscon, the company, established in 1945, produces a range of fat and shaft-type parts such as hydraulic components, powered hand tools parts, oil feld parts—an eclectic mix of complex parts and challenging B 36 PRODUCTION MACHINING :: FEBRUARY 2013 materials—many automotive. Wiscon operates three shifts, not only picking up 4 extra hours during the day, but also increasing production efciency because there is no start/stop and related warm-up time, frst piece runof and start-up procedures. Scrap rate also is reduced signifcantly. One of the parts running at Wiscon is a steel automotive camshaft end piece. Te shop is making four diferent parts for the customer on several diferent machines in the shop. "We package these and ship them to China for our customer's car manufacturing facility there," Mr. Christensen says. "Tey are confdent they can just put our parts in and they will be good." He explains that another company that had the job did it out of a saw cut blank, machining two sides, then knurling. Te part went through several operations and handling, resulting in unacceptable tolerance variation and bad quality. "Labels on dunnage from other shops show

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