What to Consider Before Automating Your CNC Machines

Automation is an approach to manufacturing that can irrevocably alter the trajectory of a business for the better. It enhances the efficiency of processes and leads to a better ROI by minimizing labor costs and production time.

However, greater levels of automation demand significant modifications to manufacturing processes that use CNC machines. Incorrect implementation or poor timing can lead to the potential derailing of a company’s momentum. If you wish to gain deeper insights into automation, you can refer to Manufacturing Automation Management.

Advantages of Automation in the CNC Industry

Check out these advantages of implementing automation in the CNC sector:

Enhanced Precision

CNC machines integrate seamlessly with computerized technologies, such as CAD/CAM, to retain high accuracy after each iteration, all without human intervention. Consequently, this ensures high-degree precision, especially for machines like a CNC mill, which must accurately remove material from a workpiece.

High-Volume Manufacturing

Automated CNC machines can handle high-volume manufacturing lines while delivering premium quality and accuracy. The consolidation of high speed, greater accuracy, and 24/7 operation facilitates automated CNC machines to take on a high manufacturing volume.

Design Consistency

CNC machines can deliver accuracy levels within 1/1000th, ensuring that the end design remains consistent regardless of the number of iterations performed. Even after the completion of a project, operators can store the design in the software and prototype.

Minimized Waste Production

Since CNC machines consistently deliver exceptionally accurate parts, they minimize waste generation. Automated CNC machines use resources efficiently, and precision cuts curb the waste produced per piece, which minimizes the overall production expenses.

Refer to this book on the Industrial Internet of Things to learn efficient tips on manufacturing and automation.

Factors to Consider Before Automating CNC Machines

Devising a well-thought automation strategy in advance defines the success of its implementation in any company. Here are some crucial factors that you must account for when approaching automation, as it will provide you with a framework to automate your CNC machines efficiently –

Proactive Approach

With the rapid expansion of automation, most businesses view it as a natural response to the market. However, implementing automation must not be reactive but proactive.

A reactive approach involves unanticipated steps, which lead to unforeseen expenses. Being reactive involves more effort in devising a long-term plan to implement full-scale automation. However, a proactive approach mitigates the likelihood of critical errors, unprecedented expenses, and manufacturing flaws by ensuring that you plan for the future.

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Human Intervention

A proactive approach to implementing automation in your business is that you layout your employees’ roles scrupulously. You must train your employees in geometric code (g-code) and CNC programming to increase the number of fully-trained programmers that handle your production line.

Besides offering training in programming, you must delegate roles for quality assurance officers and designers. Assigning these critical positions can boost the growth of your business and drive it towards full-scale automation.

Make your Operations Automation-Ready

Automation emphasizes underlying trends, signifying that if you have well-grounded operations, their functioning can get augmented. However, if that is not the case, you might receive poor results and unacceptable performance.

It is pivotal to ensure that your processes are well-prepared to adopt automation by performing relevant equipment upgrades, training workers, and performing physical enhancements to the facilities to ensure compliance with automation standards.

If you are curious and wish to know more about automation, you can read Manufacturing and Automation Technology.

Environmental Control

Full automation leads to CNC machines performing a single lengthy operation or an entire series of operations on various sections. Machine stores that require automation at such a scale must have full control of the production operation and the environment.

Check out these three primary factors to help gain maximum control of your manufacturing environment:

• Check for equipment wear and the odds of a breakdown
• Thermal expansion of the machinery
• The position of the spindle relative to all three axes of movement.

You must regulate thermal build-up over any other factor since operations are being conducted for 40 or 50 hours straight, which leads to enormous heat generation that can undermine the machine’s accuracy and forcefully alter the material’s dimensions.

Using the Right Tools

Fully automated CNC operations require complex software that can generate complex CNC programming. A fully automated CNC program requires no manual intervention but involves complex programming.

For the hardware, laser-based measuring equipment retains high accuracy levels, while the software curtails thermal fluctuations and monitors environmental changes in real-time.

Despite that industries have witnessed an enormous boost in productivity by introducing CNC machines in their mainstream operations, CNC machining still requires a skilled programmer to write several lines of code.

The code, however, is worth every line since you can entirely pull back labor hands from the tiller and leave the job for automated machines. The final result is a constant production pace with no human intervention, accompanied by a substantially lower error tendency.

Final Words

The deployment of automation in your CNC machine shop harbors numerous benefits, such as a faster turnaround time, lessened costs, and higher yield. Automation augments CNC machines with intelligence that empowers them to react to considerably more stimuli than most machinists, all while retaining their fundamental functionality. Implementing automation is an extensive process and might require you to read more about it, which is why you should refer to the book Industrial Automation: Hands on by Frank Lamb.

About the Author:

Peter Jacobs

Peter Jacobs is the Senior Director of Marketing at CNC Masters. He is actively involved in manufacturing processes and regularly contributes his insights for various blogs in CNC machining, 3D printing, rapid tooling, injection molding, metal casting, and manufacturing in general.