2018cnc4-5.2

24 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST April/May 2018 performs more than 300 setups a month. “We don’t make 10,000 of anything,” continues Katie. Most of our runs are around 50 parts.” MacKay Manufacturing is Spokane’s one stop job shop with milling, turning, mill-turn, EDM, Swiss turning, heat-treating, citric passivation, laser en- graving, 4 axis laser welding, assembly, and even a class 10,000 clean room. “All our horizontal milling centers are Makino,” explains Katie. “Our verticals are Mori Seiki as well as most of the multi axis lathes. The Swiss depart- ment has ten Tsugami machines and one Tornos, while EDM is loaded with Mitsubishi sinkers and Makino wire machines.” Milling department supervisor Gregg Meyer has been with MacKay Manufacturing almost since the beginning. “I started work here at MacKay right after the MacKay family bought it,” details Gregg. “I was going to school for fire science and needed a job. My dad knew Mike and got me on sweeping floors and doing basic maintenance. I worked my way into production, ran all the machines and moved into a leadership role as milling supervisor in 2005.” Gregg manages 34 people 24/7 and was instrumen- tal in adding Vericut simulation software into the work- flow. “The milling department doesn’t cut metal without first running the program through Vericut,” explains Gregg. “Vericut simulation is standard practice on all our mills throughout the department.” Vericut was implemented back in 2010 when MacKay Manufacturing purchased an advanced manufacturing multi axis machine tool. They knew even the smallest col- lision was going to cost them time and money. “An align- ment alone was 5k and I had to fly a person out from the east coast to do it,” tells Gregg. “It wasn’t worth the risk, so Vericut was integrated on that new machine. The results were fantastic and we added more and more machines to the program. Now it is 100% part of the culture, and a process that we never go without.” The slightest change in programming on the floor requires the operator to send it back through Vericut for verification before loading it back into the machine. “Even the best programmers make mistakes and Vericut virtually guarantees that the mistake never makes it to production,” continues Gregg. “Vericut gives the guys on the floor the confidence to press the start button without the worry of scrapping parts and crashing machines. The rule is simple. If there is a program change you post it, you run it through Vericut, then you reload it. It is an extra step, but it works, we see it work all the time.” MacKay Manufacturing has an extensive milling department. Their baseline horizontal mills are all Makino A55 or A51. They have ten of them including two cells consisting of three machines and 40 pallets in each cell. There are slight variances in the machines from year to year so each machine is loaded into Vericut. The program is only verified on the exact machine it will run on.