PAWS Workholding Releases Guide on Boosting Milling Efficiency

PAWS Workholding, a company that designs and builds custom hydraulic and manual workholding fixtures for production CNC milling, has released a guide aimed at helping production milling managers optimize their operations. The guide, titled "Adding Parts Per Shift," provides a detailed analysis of the non-cutting half of the run time and offers a practical solution to increase productivity.

According to the company’s own analysis, the time a computer numerical control (CNC) machine is actually cutting, known as feed time, accounts for only 40 to 50 percent of the overall run time. The remaining 50 to 60 percent is filled with non-cutting costs such as load and unload, tool changes, probing and tool verification, rapid moves, part seating, and operator attendance.

The guide walks through these non-cutting costs and explains how fixture density and automated clamping can recover these lost minutes. A worked example in the guide applies the formulas of the company’s free ROI calculator to illustrate the impact of increasing fixture density. For instance, holding 12 parts per cycle instead of 2 raises parts per shift from 570 to 719 on an 8-hour shift, a 26 percent increase. This also cuts tool change time per shift from about 81 minutes to 17 minutes.

The guide is written for CEOs, general managers, operations managers, and manufacturing engineers responsible for output on production mills. It is designed to help these managers understand the non-cutting costs and how to mitigate them through the use of efficient workholding fixtures. However, it is important to note that custom fixtures have a typical lead time of 8 to 10 weeks. Details on the company’s custom workholding fixtures are available on its website at pawsworkholding.com.

PAWS Workholding, operating as a DBA of its parent company, Montague Tool & Manufacturing Company, has been in business since 1943. The company designs and builds custom hydraulic and manual workholding fixtures for production CNC milling, including horizontal tombstones and 4th axis fixtures. It also manufactures a line of standard workholding products such as multi-station 5C, 3J, and ID collet systems, the Multi-Vise system, Vise Force wedge clamps, hydraulic base plates, air-over-hydraulic pump packages, and the Dead Blow Eliminator part-seating tool.