Lanese Quality Tool - Hurco 2008

Home

Products

Technology

Challenges

Support

Hurco Companies, Inc.

Lanese Tool Shaves Days Off of Jobs

Lanese Quality Tool

“I had worked some with Hurco mills in the past,” notes Lanese. “I wasn’t even aware that Hurco was producing a lathe, but I had a chance to see one at a trade show in Dayton. I ended up making the purchase in early December and the machine was installed just a few weeks later.”

Lanese Quality Tool of Centerville, Ohio is a start-up shop owned by Mark Lanese. For the past few years, Mark has been producing parts using bed mills and lathes for customers in various industries including robotics, printing equipment, automotive, aerospace and motor manufacturing.

Key Hurco Advantage

Since many of his customers are relying on lean manufacturing demands, Mark’s livelihood depends on precision and quick turnover. The poor productivity of his existing two-axis flat bed lathe with a manual four-position tool post was making it hard to compete as cycle times were simply too slow. These factors led to his decision to purchase a new Hurco TM8 slant-bed CNC turning center.

Mark was able to pick up on the easy-to-learn conversational programming the first day and was producing parts the next. Now he’s regularly running jobs with 100-500 piece quantities and he’s saving days (not just hours) of production time on single jobs.

The level of automation in the TM8 slant bed lathe with full auto turret has significantly reduced his cycle times and has freed up Mark to work on other jobs or generate new ones. In just his third job, Mark was significantly reducing cycle times. A 20-piece job would have normally required programming and reprogramming. Also, Mark would have stayed with the machine through the entire process to make sure the cuts were consistent on each piece and to change tools or fix broken pieces. With the Hurco, Mark spent twenty minutes programming and each piece took just three minutes to complete. There was no need to tweak the program. With the older lathes, programming might be the same, but each piece would take 10-15 minutes to complete and he’d have to closely inspect each piece for variations.

Summary

Another job showcases the capabilities of the Hurco TM8. This particular part requires multiple inside diameters, two grooves, and five different outside diameters using 304 stainless bar stock with a total run of 250 pieces. Using his existing flat-bed lathe, the cycle time was 40 minutes for each piece since every tool change was manual. The total job time was 150 hours. Using the new Hurco TM8, the job took 40 minutes to program and just 8 minutes to process each part — a grand total of 33 hours. The TM8 saved Mark nearly five days of machining time — time that can be spent working on other projects.