Industrial tooling equipment can quickly be realized as the lifeblood of your business. When tools break, new tools are required to replace them; when all replacements end up breaking, any sort of downtime on your production is time wasted and revenue completely lost.
In many industries, whether it be manufacturing, medical, or aerospace, tooling equipment can easily be one of the most important components required to conduct your operations. It can also, however, be on the higher side of expenses for your business due to their cost being variable depending on what happens on your production floor.
These issues beg the following question: How can I save money on tooling and prevent my business from stalling its output?
The answer—investing in high quality tooling and establishing a reliable means of procuring quality tooling for your industrial process.
How does high quality tooling save businesses money?
The most important aspect in industrial-scale production is ensuring that production is ongoing as long as possible. Downtime, which is a state in which machines or processes are not running for any particular reason, is often a major pitfall due to the opportunity cost of losing time that could have otherwise been used to create your product—revenue not generated is revenue lost.
Tooling is incredibly susceptible to downtime. A one-off issue can arise from a simple breaking of a tool— say for example, a broken endmill for a CNC machine. In this one instance, a tool will break and will need to be replaced by an operator. This one issue pushes back the expected cycle time it takes to create one part, and multiple delays can build up into several parts not being produced due to tool breakage.
At the extreme, an ineffective supply chain whether it would be internally due to a failed communication in logistics or externally if a required piece of tooling is not available from your usual supplier. As a result, this creates a prolonged period of time where no production is done.
Reinforcing the quality of your tools minimizes the risk associated with tool breakage and limits the instances of downtime your company of which your production is susceptible. A stronger tool is a longer-lasting tool—saving you on expenses best used elsewhere.
The Right Tool for the Job: Tool Design and Material Selection
Ensuring tool longevity and efficacy starts in its inception through the designing process. A proper tool needs to take in account several factors to maximize its usage without breaking and otherwise being ineffective. Engineers should often ask the following during the process of designing a tool:
What is the tool used for?
What conditions does the tool use under normal wear?
How long or how many cycles should a tool last for?
What are the expected costs for production tooling, and do considerations need to be made for increasing or decreasing tooling budget?
These questions, among other considerations, are the driving force behind what tooling should be purchased and used for your operations and processes. By establishing what your tool needs to do and the conditions of which it will need to withstand to perform optimally, businesses are able to limit unnecessary spending on under or over-specified tooling.
A major factor in tooling is material selection, which can often be the make or break for tooling in all industries. Specific processes in manufacturing require materials that is resilient enough to withstand extreme conditions such as temperature or corrosion while maintaining its form from mechanical stresses. As such, tool design should can begin within establishing what material is proper for the use case.
Establishing a Tooling Supply Chain: Finding Your Machine Shop
Logistics can be a difficult problem to solve in the context of production and manufacturing. With proper and dedicated suppliers, a proper supply chain can heavily mitigate any concerns with production, especially for one-off or short term tooling.
To find a reliable tooling supplier, it is highly recommended to consult your local machine shop partner that specializes in prototype and production-grade tooling. A machine shop can both advise on tool design and conduct the machining processes necessary to create a custom-made tool for your business, whether that would include tips and dies for extrusion or heavy-duty plates and fixtures.
D&R Machine has been an expert in CNC machining, with its expertise dating back to 1971. Since then, D&R machine has been producing quality tooling equipment for businesses in aerospace, medical, manufacturing, and other critical industries. For all tooling and machining needs, contact the D&R team today to get your machining jobs done right.
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