Need Help!- Tool Life

[gmilosevic]

Has anyonne here done any tool life analyasis? does anyone have any forms , programs, advice on how to do it correctly the first time.

thanks,
Goran

[PixMan]

I pretty-much do this for a living. The first question to answer is: What is the objective of the analysis?

Do you want to get maximum tool life? Ill-advised objective because maximizing tool life usually means you've saved on something that represents only 3% to 6% of the cost per piece, and productivity (how many pieces per hour/day/week etc.) is far lower. This results in lower tooling costs, but an increased cost per piece by virtue of making fewer pieces per period.

Your best goal is to maximize productivity while lowering cost per piece. It's that simple. Now, how to measure it? First you document the current process. Note cycle time, material cost, burden rate, number of pieces to be made, cutting speeds & feed rates of tools, tool life in either number of pieces or amount of material removed per tool, tool change times, rapid rates, maximum available speeds, machine HP available, chip control issues, coolant used, and any other factor you can gather.

Now look carefully at the bottlenecks and limitations. Does the process show any areas for potential improvement? Can you, for instance, speed up a turning process by going to a new grade of carbide with a different chipbreaker design? If so, will that increased process speed result in exceeding the maximum HP of the machine, cause problems with coolant steaming away (can you now cut dry?), or does increased insert change time and frequency (including re-confirming size control) cancel out the gains?

There's a lot more to this than meets the eye. Think about what the true goal is, and I may be able to help more.

[gmilosevic]

The primary goal is to get the max number of parts per hour, the secondary goal would be to know tool change frequencies; for quoting purposes and assisting the operator in making a quality part. I have a record of the current process that includes the insert type used along with SFM, feed IPR and cycle time. I need to improve on the cycle time to make more parts per hour and at the same time record the number of PCS per corner of the insert. I need the parts per corner information for quoting & training purposes, but I am having difficulty collecting that information from 2nd & 3rd shift. I have been monitoring 1st shift and my findings are really close to the industry standards of 20-30 min in cut time per corner for the parts that I have looked at so far.