Dynamic Tool & Design has a history of adding automation tools to its processes to increase machine usage and throughput without additional labor hours. In 1998, the company fitted a carbon cutter and EDM with robots and became one of the first mold makers to realize lights out machining.

And again in 2000, Dynamic installed a pair of WorkMasters to service four EDMs, while a wire EDM was also automated with a robot.

Now that the Makino V33 is in place, it is only a matter of time before it too is fitted with a robot. The V33 was modified to allow Dynamic Tool to rig it with a robot after they made it through their learning process.

To do this, Makino manufactured the V33 with its power supply separated from the rest of the machine and then installed an access door leading into the machining envelop, providing easy access to the work table and spindle. The robot will perform tool changes and swap parts on and off the table.

“If I were doing it now, I probably would have put a robot on right away instead of relying on the machine’s automatic tool changer,” says Irv Fischer, co-founder and vice president of Dynamic Tool. “But we needed to feel out the technology and determine how we were really going to run things and hold things and set things up. Those decisions need to be made before you start automating. That was a little bit of a learning curve that we wanted to go through.”

Fischer expects to increase machine utilization by 2 1/2 times its current capability. “If machine time is up, we will have more projects go through the shop,” he says. “In addition, our lead-times will get even shorter.”

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