In addition to being a master distributor of over 100,000 standard and hard-to-find fasteners and lifting hardware, Huyett offers engineering support and complete in-house manufacturing and sourcing for secondary processes.
Huyett’s new Tsugami B0325-iii Swiss-Turn lathe is expected to elevate the company’s performance with large runs and customized batches, ensuring greater precision cuts and time savings.
To ensure a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility and multiple customizing capabilities, the company recently expanded its capabilities, installing a new Tsugami B0325-iii Swiss-Turn lathe.
The new addition promises a more streamlined machining process, which means Hyett can deliver runs of any size with shorter lead times, more accuracy, and better-quoting mechanisms.
The Tsugami B0325-iii introduces three core improvements to lathe production processes, including:
1. Better precision. Conventional lathes fix a part at one or both ends but fail to support the center. However, if a cut applies force to the center, it can push the part out of alignment (also known as deflection) and reduce the cut’s accuracy. The Tsugami features a guide bushing that supports the part at the point of tooling, significantly decreasing any deflection — even on heavy cuts. This reduces the time needed for refining initial runs and produces more consistent results.
“The best way to understand how the Tsugami’s design reduces deflection is to picture holding a pool cue,” explains Jeremiah Van Doren, Huyett’s production manager. “In a Swiss lathe, the guide bushing is like your forward hand. That hand holds the cue steady as your back hand feeds the cue forward and backward. Contrast that with a traditional lathe, which lacks a guide bushing. It would be like holding the cue with one (really strong) hand.”
2. Shorter lead times. The Tsugami rotates and oscillates the part at the same time, as opposed to traditional lathes that only facilitate fixed rotation. The added back-and-forth movement allows multiple processes to machine the part in one pass. Coupled with a 20-tool capacity, this feature will allow for more complex cuts in less time. This is something the Tsugami can handle because of the guide bushing and resulting accuracy. This also means it can often be set up to run with minimal or no human intervention.
The operator does not need to make constant adjustments to keep the parts in spec. It’s common in the industry for one operator to attend to several machines simultaneously, intervening only for setups and to change worn tools.
3. Greater accuracy. With customized software, the Tsugami’s program creates quick, realistic part renditions that can be used to produce more accurate quotes for a job. As these jobs will predominantly be large runs with little intervention, there are also fewer variables to factor into quotes, which increases their accuracy.
“We ran our initial test with a fastener we’ve been customizing for years on traditional lathes. Each piece used to take 208 seconds to produce,” says Van Doren. “On the Swiss lathe, this process now takes 87 seconds per piece. That’s a 58% decrease in machining time, and we’re confident we can cut an additional 10%. This is especially impactful for large orders. Imagine the time savings on a 100k-piece run!”
Learn more here.
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Filed Under: Fastening + joining
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