SMARTPM's facilities in Elgoibar hosted a technical seminar in which strategies and tools that allow machining workshops to improve their efficiency and quality levels were shown.
On April 17th SMARTPM together with Comercial HEYBER held a technical seminar on advanced machining and automation strategies aimed at machining workshops. The event had a large number of participants and during two hours they attended two presentations and a live demonstration of an autonomous manufacturing and inspection process.
The day began with words of welcome and thanks from Alicia Bouzas on behalf of SMARTPM and Nerea del Río for HEYBER, who said that the day "was going to make many of those present reflect on a better future in their processes".
They were followed by Pablo Medina, an expert in Sandvik Coromant products and a connoisseur of the challenges currently facing production.
Sandvik Coromant's technical presentation on tooling and machining strategies
In his presentation, Pablo Medina focused on one-piece rotary tools, both in terms of theoretical knowledge and application strategies. He also showed the new 2024 innovations that Sandvik Coromant has just launched in March.
Attendees had the opportunity to learn about the products and systems available to them and then ask several questions.
In Medina's words, this day has been "a good opportunity to have contact with customers, talk to them and let them know a little of what we have in terms of products and systems. Then, during the catering more interest arises and some of them comment on specific doubts or want to know more details about a particular topic." They also conveyed specific interests "such as testing some raw material to be machined," adds Medina.
"The goal of these events should also be to encourage interaction and information seeking by attendees."
Pablo Medina
Nerea del Río, commercial engineer of Comercial eibarresa HEYBER was satisfied with the training because "it is always a great help to make the machining of the parts safer, and to increase the performance of the tool". And he recalled that "we have more than 30 years of experience in the machining sector and, in addition to being official distributors of Sandvik Coromant, we carry out studies of parts and processes to achieve the objective that the customer needs."
Transform business processes into more competitive and intelligent processes.
In the second of the presentations, Alicia Bouzas, SMARTPM's business development manager, gave an introduction to smart processes and introduced concepts such as smartfactory, connectivity, smart processes, etc. She explained how technology provides business processes with new attributes that turn them into smart processes and highlighted the need to produce more with the available resources to maintain profitability and competitiveness in the market.
Bouzas reviewed several specific problems such as low productivity, staff shortages or improved planning, which can be solved regardless of the digital maturity of the company.
"In machining companies there is a real need to absorb technology and process knowledge."
Alicia Bouzas
Referring to digitization, he appreciated that the industry has already assumed the importance of digitizing conventional machining processes. "We can accompany companies all along that transformation path. Regarding the process part we can say that not everything is automatable but if we improve operations we can get there."
During the presentation, Alicia Bouzas stressed that "automation is not robotization, at least not necessarily." "It doesn't matter if you can't have a robot in the shop floor for whatever reason, because you can choose how you want that workflow, how to guide the operator, how to visualize the whole plant... that's also automating."
She highlighted the uniqueness of SMARTPM as an engineering company when it comes to machining automation. In addition to having its own automation platform such as MIC, Alicia stressed the importance of process knowledge: "We address the issue of automation and process improvement by providing comprehensive support", and emphasized that not everything can be automated, but that it is possible to improve the processes of companies, even achieving their digitization".
"We emphasize our ability to offer complete solutions, regardless of the technology, brand or process used by the company. The MIC platform can integrate all relevant elements and provide additional functionality."
Alicia Bouzas
Before giving way to the demonstration, Bouzas explained in detail how the MIC platform works, emphasizing data integration from different sources, planning and autonomous decision making. "The goal is to provide comprehensive functionality that goes beyond simple data visualization."
Demonstration of automatic control in manufacturing process
As part of the technical day, a demonstration was carried out to control the manufacturing process of two pockets automatically, applying tool corrections in real time. The project manager Mikel Gómez and the automation technician Maialen Portilla, both from SMARTPM, were in charge of guiding and commenting the whole process.
The demonstration consisted of machining a single part with a "loop inspection" in two pockets. In the first pocket, the length was measured, while in the second pocket, the width was evaluated.
For the first pocket, after roughing and finishing operations, the length was measured using a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). The results revealed an excess of material, which led to the application of an autonomous reworking process.
According to Gómez, taking into account the workflow and the previously defined rules, MIC orders the rework and corrects the initial radius to compensate for this excess, ensuring that the final product complies with the defined tolerances. After applying this correction, the finishing operation was repeated and the length was checked again, obtaining satisfactory results that allowed moving on to the next step.
Next, the finishing operation was repeated on the CNC and then the length of that pocket was measured again on the CMM. This time, the result was good, and the second pocket was machined.
"Some companies are already quite knowledgeable and interested, or even already have some automation in their processes, but for many others, it's something new, and depending on their impressions they may start thinking about applying it in their companies."
Nerea del Río
As for the second pocket, roughing and finishing operations were performed on the CNC, followed by measurement on the CMM. However, the results showed that the part had been over-eaten, which resulted in the part being classified as scrap. As a result, the robot automatically moved the part to the warehouse designated for defective parts.
Portilla stressed the importance of this demonstration, highlighting the system's ability to make automatic corrections in real time, which contributes to improving the efficiency and quality of the manufacturing process.
The demonstration allowed attendees to better understand the automation possibilities of the MIC platform with existing equipment already on the market.
