Providing automated precision engineering to the aerospace, telecommunications, F1, and medical sectors.
There is a lot of noise in the manufacturing and engineering sectors about full automation and its benefits. However, at RST, we see automation as an addition to our processes, enabling us to complete lights-out manufacturing alongside our daytime operations.
Obviously, lights-out manufacturing brings multiple benefits to a business in that it doesn’t require human involvement, and running outside of standard working hours means that energy costs are lower. However, before we could be ready to start lights-out or automated machining we have had to ensure that we have considered the following:
Working with sectors such as aerospace and medical we are often machining complex geometries and tight tolerances so it was really important to make sure that we selected the best automated machinery for the job. Working alongside our Röders Tec RXP601DS CNC machine we have selected the RSC2 pallet handling system as this enables us to load up to 75 components to be completed one after the other with no human intervention. Due to the quality of the machines and programming, we can ensure that the accuracy remains the same for every component, meaning there will be no difference from the first to the last part being machined.
During normal working hours, when engineers are operating the processes, it is easy to see if any external factors are impacting on the effectiveness of the machines, however, when relying on automated processes it is essential to make sure that the factory environment is optimized to prevent disruption. With this in mind, we operate an air-conditioning system to ensure that the temperature in factory remains consistent, whatever the temperature outside, to minimize an impact on the machining of the most accurate of part.
The whole idea of lights-out manufacturing is to maximize production and cost efficiency for our customers but one of the risks to this is the automation malfunctioning with nobody around to pick up on it. To minimise this risk we have chosen machinery that integrates communication technology, meaning that if there is a problem during the machining process it will send alerts to nominated mobiles & email addresses making people aware. Where possible we can avert any issues with human intervention but failing this acts as an early warning system to notify technicians about any issues with our machines.
For us, automation has never been about reducing headcount or our employees, it is more customer-centric, around increasing our productivity, cost-effectiveness, and customer satisfaction. In our work with aerospace, F1 other such industries, it is quite often just-in-time manufacturing, meaning that our customers want jobs quickly and sometimes at the last minute – they don’t however want to compromise on quality or accuracy. By operating this hybrid model we have the best of both worlds. We can provide the comfort to our customers that things like planning, programming, and tooling are being completed by skilled engineers but also the efficiency and speed by being able to operate 24 hours a day.
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RST Engineering Limited
Unit 1 Youngs Industrial Estate
Stanbridge Road
Leighton Buzzard
Bedfordshire
LU7 4QB
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