A Night at the - Today's Machining World

“
how it works
By Barbara Donohue
Competing Successfully
Using Older Equipment
You can do a lot with what you have—and that doesn’t mean just your machines.
In these tough economic times you’re no doubt looking
at how to bring in new business and increase revenue. As
customers push hard for faster deliveries and lower prices,
and move toward sending work offshore, what can you do
to compete? Buying new machines may not be feasible, so
what can you do to increase orders and raise productivity
with your existing machines, without spending a lot of money?
Revival of a screw machine house
“We are not giving up on the industry,” said Matt Corcoran,
president of Waterbury Screw Machine Products Company,
Waterbury, Conn. “Rather, we’re focusing on what we’ve got here.”
A year and a half ago, Waterbury Screw Machine Products
was definitely feeling the effects of the recession. In business
since 1938, the company has been led by third-generation
owner Corcoran since 1988. The shop, in the same location
for many years, runs cam-type, single- and multispindle
screw machines: Davenport, Acme-Gridley, Brown & Sharpe.
“Nothing is computerized,” said vice president Charlie
Smith. The company makes products mainly for the electrical
switch industry—lots of toggles, nuts and other small
parts, primarily in brass. Surprisingly, 90 percent of their
production is used in Mexico and Costa Rica, Corcoran said.
Smith, also a third-generation machinist, joined the
company a year and a half ago. Since then, he and Corcoran
have figured out how to breathe new life into the business
and have seen revenue increase by a factor of two and a half.
The changes they made could work for many shops that
are feeling the pinch.
The right people
Corcoran and Smith restructured their personnel, building
a workforce willing to work, pitch in, cross train on different
machines, and stay positive. When the setup person for
the 1 1/4” National Acme multi-spindle became seriously
ill, Smith learned how to set it up. Then they made sure
someone else learned. “The guy with 20 years on a
Brown & Sharpe can train to be an Acme setup guy,” Smith
said. “It used to be ‘my machine.’” Not any more.
“They’ve got to have a sense of urgency: ‘We’ve got to get
that machine back up,’” Smith said.
“We hire on attitude,” Corcoran said.
As sales have grown, the company has been able to
hire, going from 24 or 25 employees to 43. “We’re providing
good-paying manufacturing jobs in a down economy,”
Corcoran said.
“We go on three principles,” Corcoran said. “We pay a fair
wage, we provide good health benefits, and we understand
that life doesn’t revolve around work.” Workers go to their
kids’ games, for example, as long as they don’t abuse the
privilege.
Stretch to meet the market
“We quoted parts that we previously wouldn’t have because
they were too difficult,” Corcoran said. Now they can quote
thin-walled parts, long parts, and different materials like
steel and stainless steel in addition to the brass and aluminum
they have traditionally machined.
“We run big or small orders,” Corcoran said. How small and
how big? “From 50 or 100 parts, up to 9 million,” Smith said.
Tweak your process
Engineering the processes has cut cycle times. Smith pointed
to a Davenport making small brass parts. This part went from
a cycle time of 2 seconds to half a second. How? It had been
using a steel-threading method, he said, so changing to a
brass-threading method saved time. Also, he reduced the
drilling time by half using a rotating drill instead of a fixed one.
A thin nut made on a Davenport is now machined four at
a time, connected end-to-end. Then a multi-blade cutoff saw
separates them—so four parts fall per cycle. “If you can go
from 1000 parts per hour to 4000, why not?” said Smith.
For flexibility, they plan tooling so a job can run on different
machines. For example, one part runs on an Acme
November/December 2010 19
using older equipment