True upgrade: Dedicated wheel truing

It didn’t take long for executives at Myles Tool Co. Inc. to realize that if they wanted to make the most of their 2005 expansion plans, they needed to overhaul how they made thread mills.

Since its founding in 1977, the Sanborn, N.Y.-based toolmaker focused primarily on low-volume orders for solid- carbide special tools. Myles Tool’s 30 or so employees regularly produced modified endmills, profile step drills, porting tools and other customized HSS and carbide products for industries ranging from aerospace and automotive to defense and medical.

Then 5 years ago, the company decided to branch out and offer a standard product line. The added emphasis introduced new challenges. The success of a special order business centers in large part on the technological expertise of the machinist to make the tool properly. Mass producing a standard tool line, on the other hand, emphasizes cycle time. Time spent setting up machines and running jobs comes under close scrutiny.

“Cycle time is very competitive [in mass production],” said Jeremy Bout, Myles Tool’s grinding supervisor during the expansion. “We needed to make sure that the machines were running as fast they as they could, that the time spent dressing and preparing the wheel was not eating up production time.”

In particular, the manufacture of thread mills, which had become a big focus for the company, was also a drain on machine productivity. Myles Tool devoted four of its seven CNC grinders to the operation.

“The large scale production of thread mills really brought the issue to a head,” Bout said. “We needed a very specific form on the grinding wheel, and to dress that in the machine
to manufacture the thread mill was very time-consuming—about 2 hours,” he said. “And that’s not billable time.” Bout estimated that at a shop rate of $80 per hour, the nonbillable
time spent internally dressing wheels ran into the tens of thousands of dollars.