what is a cost of machine tool

Even if you spend a little bit of money in the beginning, you will save a lot more time and money if you purchase the correct equipment for making paint bucket mould and PET preform mould in the future. There are numerous factors involved in determining the true cost of ownership – from the cost of financing and resale, to the cost of uptime and operational efficiency, to the cost of tooling and the cost of reducing secondary operations, to increased accuracy. Throughout this article, we will look at how outdated technology can be detrimental to the success of your business in a competitive global market and how you can put money into moldmaking equipment that gives you a competitive advantage.

Putting the Right Strategy In Place

To succeed as a business you must first eliminate as many tasks as you can and as much labor as possible if you want to be successful. In order to be competitive in today’s market, it is essential to have the right equipment, whether it is cutting tools, the machine itself, or programs – you need all of these things to be as efficient and precise as you can. If you were able to do all this without supervision while simultaneously decreasing the cost, as well as improving the accuracy and quality of your work in the process, then you would have realized a huge improvement. In summary, it is important to point out that you can provide customers with a better product if you do it yourself.

Simply put, the older the technology, the more manual work is required, which on the whole will cost you more money in the future. In order to cut costs and get your PMMA injection molding and overmolding product as quickly as possible, the best thing you can do is eliminate as much manual labor as possible, regardless of whether labor is involved in working on the machine or secondary procedures such as polishing and hand work.

Older technology refers to CNC machines that are typically more than eight years old and have lower rpms with no acceleration or deceleration software. Modern machines can still be built using this ancient technology. It was once common to make large, deep cuts at slow feed rates. In contrast, the high horsepower spindles have a low tool life and produce a poor surface finish. In addition to ER collet holders, traditional toolholders included endsmill holders with set screws. These holders are not suitable for tool life or surface finish due to their balance and runout.

When this happens, it’s time to replace your old CNC with a new one with cutting-edge features such as tool changers for reducing labor costs, as well as lasers for tooling and cutting methods, which means greater productivity with the same staff.

Normally, a piece of work’s cost justification is relatively black and white in a production environment. For example, the shop must create many parts, so it purchases X equipment. In a mold-making setting, however, it’s more complicated since the final product must be processed at several different points in the workshop.

There is a possibility that, if you look at only the machining portion of the cost, the speed of machining may not be cost-effective. You need to look at more than the machine hours. The other hours or processes, such as EDM, polishing, as well as inspection, would need to be examined. By reducing the secondary operations part of the total cost of ownership, one is able to make more money by reducing the total amount needed to make a mold insert.

How Does This Work?

High-quality machines will extend the life of the consumable tooling. The simple idea that you will spend less time switching between different tools is a reduction in costs, not to mention that you can work with the same tool for 20 or 30 hours without mixing the tools.

In some cases, it is possible to achieve additional savings by using more modern equipment instead of HTML0 EDM. It is not cost-effective for companies to cut ribs and small features with old technology compared to today’s top-quality machines. With the new high-speed machines, very small details that would have been produced with EDM can now be cut.

It is our belief that with the current technology, this mold will be sealed and then spotted together (sealed off to make the part) much faster and with a much higher degree of precision. It was a few years ago that there was a mold that was placed in a spotting press and it would be hand-ground for two to three days in order to put it all together and fit it. The time it used to take to cut these parts accurately has now been reduced to the hours rather than the days. What a huge improvement! You are saving time and money by cutting down delivery time by two days.

The older technology may only run one program to complete the job, making it more difficult to save money by leaving it unattended at night. Many shops claim that their older machines are doing lights-out, however, this is simply due to the slowness of their programs. In order to ensure safety, the machines are left running at a lower feed rate. Even though it is a very low productivity level compared to the true lights-out, unsupervised, facilities being discussed currently, the shops believe they are getting something for free.

Summary

In other words, if you would like to continue to use the latest technology in your machine because it comes with all the added features, and continue to switch these machines on a regular basis for three years, you’ll discover that they are getting more affordable, since you are just having to pay the difference between the two. The idea of replacing five machines at once would be a huge financial burden to take on all at once, which wouldn’t be cost-effective for most small mold shops.