Behind the scenes........pics.

[wrustle]

(11-25-2015, 10:31 AM)Sunset Machine Wrote: Sure like to see how-to's from a real shop like yours and the other guys'. But I'm curious, 1/8" thick, stack of 12. Sounds like 1-1/2" in the vice. Why not 32 or more to load up the vice and a suitable face mill? Would that come apart, or did I just double your output?

Believe it or not.........12..........is the perfect number for handling.   It's honestly as plain and simple as that.

The actual cycle time is less than 30 seconds.   In that 30 seconds of FREE time for the operator, it gives them the chance to get two sets of 12 pieces staged and ready to go in the machine.

Aside from that, we have a +/-.0025" tolerance on the width we're milling.  Once the pieces are placed in the vise and vise jaws are brought to bear on the parts, the operator places a 1.5" wide parallel on top of the 12pcs in the vise and while pushing down on the parallel, they unclamp the vise just enough to seat all the blanks in the vise uniformly, and then clamp for milling.

We did consider exactly what you stated.....more pieces per cycle, but the fact of the matter was, it was just too cumbersome to handle.

Whenever running a production job where operator intervention becomes a major factor in the cycle time, ergonomics plays a HUGE role in what gets accomplished by the end of the day!