Page 29 - 2021 CNC West April-May

a resolution that is better than any machinist ever could sense. We’ve done the game countless times with guys claiming they can tell by touch better than the sensors. They are quickly humbled when I tell them the machine just lost an insert and they didn’t notice. The point is that everything you can see you can automate against. Most of the time people think of precautionary uses for this kind of tech. If the insert fails shut down the machine and so forth. The Caron TMAC system also allows you to attack as well as defend. You can designate it to run at this exact HP and if you are over to slow the feed rate, but if you are under to crank things up and go faster. Tool life becomes better AND productivity becomes better, all by having fully customizable and automated feed rates based off the HP load. That is only one aspect, but one that can yield tremendous gains when deployed.”
Nathan is asked a lot if this is tech that can benefit the guy with a basic 3 axis CNC machine tool not running mission critical or high value parts. His answer might surprise you. “Anyone can benefit from the Caron system by the recording feature alone” touts Nathan. “When something inevitably goes wrong there is no guessing when it happened. You know exactly when it all went south by pulling up the charts for that exact tool and seeing that it happened Tuesday at 01:05:56 pm. We use the TMAC system on a $10,000 Inconel combustion chamber for a rocket and on a $20 piece of plastic. Naysayers scoff at technology like this because of they think it is only useful when cutting hard materials or in production. They don’t imagine that the Caron TMAC system has enough resolution to see finish cutting in acrylic, and that the second identical feature on the same part counts as production. Everyone is familiar with the machine’s load monitor bar and people see it move when they are cutting something hard, but don’t see it move when they are cutting something soft. The TMAC system has an incredibly sensitive multi-range transducer. The multi range part means it can focus on a certain range of HP and it break it down into 1000 increments.”
When asked what’s next, Nathan responds “we have been putting a lot of effort into our Wolfram Operating System called OnTakt and we plan to bring it to market this year. We optimize everything and the web app suite contains the tools we use to run our shop. In OnTakt the machines talk directly to our team through Slack and Microsoft Teams and let us know if they need help. Anything from not keeping up with production, a bad dimension trend, a fluid shortage, or a TMAC stop for a dull tool without a backup. Anyone can log in and see tool consumption, run rates, alarms, cut recordings, and dimensional data from anywhere. I have used a lot of systems and at a certain point it is hard to get them just right without living with them in a live shop.”
Manufacturing is in need of a PR makeover to appeal to the latest generations driven by technology. Even though computer is the first letter in CNC the stigma of it being dirty manual repetitive job still exists, that is if it is even thought of at all. How do you change that perceived notion? “I was IMTS at a big fancy dinner and guy next to me was talking about how hard it was to find people,” concludes Nathan. “He wanted super smart kids that dropped out of high school but were ultra-motivated and didn’t want a traditional path so that he could get them cheap. For whatever reason he thought this was a classic recipe for success. I have a different thought. If you want to make parts in this country, then you need to create a job that is suitable for the folks that this country is producing. You give them a fast feedback loop of learning, access to information, and they optimize really fast. We built Wolfram Manufacturing utilizing tools that are more appealing to young people in 2021. With TMAC and OnTakt, our shop is like a live action video game. Half our guys don’t have degrees, and none of them came to me as a trained machinist, but here we are utilizing the latest technology to make complex parts and training others to do the same. For all of us at Wolfram Manufacturing coming to work is fun, making parts is fun, using science and technology is fun, and dedicating our time together to making the next day even better keeps it going.”
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If you are tired of making “custom tools” the Caron TMAC system can help protect tooling, parts, and your valuable machines.
Wolfram Manufacturing benefit from using the Caron TMAC system on everything ranging from a $20 piece of acrylic to high dollar super alloy mission critical parts.