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TRUE
PRECISION
MACHINING
ArIticle & by Photos Supplied to CNC West Magazine
f you like wine or you like movies you have probably seen the movie Sideways. The movie was set in Buellton, California in the Santa Ynez Valley. This
region is known for wineries, antique shops and Andersons split pea soup. Who would have thought that there was a full-service machine shop, True Precision Machining, which provides a complete design and manufacturing facility with an in-house engineering, design and quality assurance team. This unique situation positions them to provide outstanding communication, efficient utilization of manufacturing time and a complete understanding of a customer’s manufacturing requirements. True Precision Machining in Buellton, California promises quality control, quick turnaround time and innovative solutions to meet their customers’ challenges and requirements. However, even with their highly trained and skilled team, it was challenging to meet certain deadlines.
Producing parts fast enough on their wire EDM machine is just one example of this challenge.
“We typically run two shifts per day for five days, totaling80productionhoursperweek,”explainedMarvin Rodriguez, vice president of True Precision Machining. “A 500-part job would take at least a week to finish working at that pace—and that’s not accounting for downtime or breaks. To stay competitive and meet our customers’ high demands, we need to be faster than that.”
Rodriguez recognized that the existing production schedule took advantage of only 80 of the 168 hours in a week. What if True Precision could operate at a higher capacity, taking advantage of all available hours, unhindered by machine downtime?
During their extensive research of collaborative robotics, True Precision discovered Productive Robotics’ OB7 at a tradeshow and taught it a task on the spot.
“We were impressed by the no-programming user interface and how simple it was to teach the cobot tasks. This would be a solution that we could develop on our own without hiring outside integration,” stated Rodriguez.
True Precision was also drawn to OB7’s seven axes, which provide greater flexibility and the ability to work in confined spaces.
“We saw how well OB7’s 7th axis worked during the CNC demo, and we wanted that in our shop,” emphasized Rodriguez.
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CNC WEST August/September 2020