Productive Times: Sold on a cell

Outsourcing machining services enables a manufacturer to avoid purchasing capital equipment, but lead times tend to be longer and the outsourcing company loses some control and flexibility. 

Niagara Gear experienced that scenario and determined that the benefits of having more in-house machining capabilities outweighed the capital expenditures.

A year ago, the Buffalo, N.Y.-based division of Gear Motions Inc., Syracuse, N.Y., bought a VF-2 vertical machining center from Haas Automation Inc., Oxnard, Calif. The company selected that VMC after running test parts on a VF-2 housed at nearby Erie Community College, which offers a CNC machining program. The sample test gears had tapped holes that were 5 diameters deep—a challenging requirement—and the college’s VMC was able to effectively tap the holes along with machining other part features, said Paul Andruszko, vice president of Niagara Gear. 

The turning portion of Niagara Gear's work cell includes a Yama Seiki GLS-200 (left) and a Yama Seiki A-3300. All images courtesy of Niagara Gear.

He added that the company produces spur and helical gears made from a wide variety of materials, including 8620 steel and various tool steels, for Gear Motions’ numerous divisions and customers.

“That gave us a pretty good confidence level that we would be able to drill and tap through the thicker material that we generally run here,” he said. “The machine performed very well, and we worked out the details to purchase the new machine from Haas.”

But Niagara Gear still sent parts to three or four area machine shops for turning, Andruszko said. As a result, lead times were 7 to 8 weeks.

Coincidentally, one of those shops closed this year. Niagara Gear decided to buy some of the shop’s manufacturing equipment and arrange it in a work cell along with the VMC. In addition, Niagara Gear hired the shop’s machinist who turned Niagara’s parts to run the cell at Niagara. The gear manufacturer acquired two Yama Seiki USA turning centers (models A-3300 and GLS-200), a Clausing Industrial Model C16AX automatic saw, a Marksman Model MK-100 computerized pin-type stamping machine and a Brown & Sharpe Gage 2000 coordinate measuring machine. Many of Niagara’s part programs, as well as the required tooling, came with the two turning centers, “so we could hit the ground running once we powered up,” he added.

The work cell at Niagara Gear has a Haas VF-2 vertical machining center.

Although Niagara Gear purchases most of its raw material sawed to size, Andruszko said the company will saw raw material into slugs for short-term projects when it needs to expedite delivery. The slugs go into the turning centers, and Niagara Gear simultaneously turns two different part numbers in each machine. Next, the parts are stamped before being gear-hobbed and then machined in the VMC, or vice versa. Afterward, the parts are outsourced for heat treatment before Niagara Gear performs all the subsequent finishing operations in-house.

Niagara Gear also continues to subcontract parts for magnetic particle inspection and plating. “We have no plans to bring any of that in-house,” Andruszko said. “We’ve always believed we want to stay with our core competency, which is manufacturing the gear itself.”

By adding in-house machining capabilities, Andruszko said Niagara Gear can better control lead times for gear blanks on new or existing projects, even ones with extremely tight delivery schedules. In one instance, the company was able to help a new customer in the flexographic printing industry by providing hardened and ground gears with a lead time of less than 3 weeks.

“That is not typical, but it was a new program for a customer that absolutely needed that shortened lead time in order to be successful,” he said. “And it was the newly acquired equipment that allowed us to provide the gears without pushing any of our other customers’ work.”