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Whitney Fabrication Center Increases Manufacturer's Up Time to 95 Percent
Charles Machine Works manufactures the Ditch Witch trencher used to bury cable and piping underground in such applications as power and communications cable, water distribution systems, agriculture and landscape irrigation systems, natural gas lines and oil field gathering lines. TRUECut is a state-of-the-art cutting technology. Plasma controls are conveniently located at the operator's station. Its monitoring capability monitors for arc-time and number of starts. This totally integrated oxygen-plasma cutting system guarantees high quality and maximum productivity to lower operating costs. "The TRUECut system is a lot smoother cut and will cut any material much better for welding," states Lavern Lenaburg, manager of Industrial Engineering. He added, "As long as we produce trenchers, we'll need plasma-cutting machines; lasers just won't do the work." Charles Machine Works runs 1/4-inch material 50-60 percent of the time with machine capability up to 5/8 inch thick. The rotary ram system has a 5-inch capacity. The fully automated indexing of all tooling has all tools rotatable so no special tooling is needed. Its full 40 tons of hydraulic punching works with the plasma cutting system for efficient, flexible fabricating of materials. The rotary ram increases tool and machine utilization and reduces setup time and secondary finishing operations. Charles Machine Works uses mostly HR materials with some 12-gauge coated materials for fuel tanks. According to programmer Ron Inselman, "The rotary ram is a big plus for Charles Machine Works. Almost every nest we produce needs this function and it reduces a lot of tools." Charles Machine Works has utilized their first SmartCam Programming System to allow the programs to go straight to the W.A. Whitney 3700 ATC. At present, there are 46 nests programmed for the 3700 ATC, with an average of eight to 10 tool sizes for each nest (see figure 1 in pdf). The goal for Charles is to take many more of the nests from the three Wiedemann turret presses and put them on the 3700 ATC. W.A. Whitney fabricating machines are not new to Charles Machine Works. The capabilities and reliability of Whitney products have been proven by on-site performance. Citing the previously installed Whitney 661-84 Panelmatic and 661 ATC Fabricating Center, which use the Optimation Opti-Punch software, Lenaburg says, "These machines are two of the hardest working machines we have. They're fully loaded 90 percent of the time." With these Whitney machines, Charles Machine Works has been able to program up to 1,000 parts compared to a previous 200 parts. In addition, the machines have reduced setup time. The company now uses tooling cartridges which can be set up off-line, keeping the machine running during tool preparation. Any size tool can be used to fit in any station which is a big advantage when nesting parts. "Labor savings, reduced setup time, better material utilization and material handling are just some of the savings we've seen," commented Lenaburg. Prior to the Whitney machines, Charles Machine Works did very little nesting of parts. Today, nesting plays an important role. Before the "nesting" days, the company took a given part number and fit as many parts as possible on a sheet or portion of a sheet. This caused overruns which had to be stored in a warehouse and created a lot of inventory. Now, with a software system, the company can load the specified number of parts that are required, prepare the nesting program to mix all the parts and various numbers on any given material thickness and produce them to schedule. Everything that is nested is downloaded via a direct line to the Whitney machines. Some tools are allocated which are already in place; thus, the average tool change is about five per nest. Integrating the Whitney fabricating centers with the software system allows the company to keep its delivery commitment without overproducing parts. Before the purchase of the Whitney machines the company often waited until it could build five units and sometimes waited until it could build 50 units. The result was either over-manufacturing or delays on parts. In addition to trenchers, Charles Machine Works pioneered the use of computer-assisted manufacturing (CAM) in Oklahoma and has introduced a complete line of "trenchless" underground construction tools such as the Jet Trac Guided Boring System. The 8/60 Jet Trac system offers new long distance boring capabilities in a compact, maneuverable machine. It has the power to bore and pullback 8-inch material distances of 600 feet or more in compactible soils. It is ideal for jobs requiring more length and pullback in an urban environment. Charles Machine Works manufactures some 13 basic models of trenchers, ranging from 5 HP units to the workhorse 100 HP tractors. Hundreds of trenching options give users a broad array of possibilities to choose from, depending on the type of installation. Ditch Witch trenchers were the first of their kind on the market and have been manufactured since 1949. (Used with permission from Metal Fabricating News, Jul - Sep, 1994)
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