6-Axis Laser Slashes Setup & Cycle Times by 75% at Baker Oil Tools

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Baker Oil Tools, a world leader in the energy industry, manufactures and designs tools used for the exploration and production of oil and gas. Since installing a 4000w, 5' x 10', 3D rotary laser (Mazak's SpaceGear) in 2002, Baker has been able to replace the conventional milling of some parts with 3D-rotary laser cutting. Eric Blanton, Manufacturing Engineer, discusses two such parts and explains how laser cutting has significantly reduced processing and setup times and increased production flexibility.

How is the first part, the larger one, made?
This part is made from 3/8" thick, 4140 carbon steel tube with a diameter of 10". It's cut to length in the saw shop and threaded on the lathe. The laser cuts the 2.5" x 2.5" windows and the milling teeth at the top. Each window has a slight bevel, so we use the 6-axis 3D features as well as the rotary capabilities of the laser.

We could have used a conventional mill, but it would have taken two setups - one to mill the windows and one for the teeth. These setups would have taken approximately 1.5 hours each. In addition, processing time would have taken 45-60 minutes. We cut this part on the laser in less than five minutes. That's 1/8-1/12 the processing time.

How are you making the small component?
It starts off as a 2' x 2' cylindrical bar stock of 4140 carbon steel. The bar is drilled and turned on a lathe. We end up with a 1" tall part with a 0.25" diameter. Then we use the laser to cut the 84 square windows, which are each 0.060" x 0.060".

Besides laser cutting, what other methods did you consider?
We tried to use a very small end mill to cut each of those windows. We also could have used a submerged EDM.

How did the three methods compare?
They all held the tolerance - the quality was fine. But compared to the laser, the mill and EDM were a lot slower. We found that by using the laser the actual runtime for this part was reduced by 90 to 95%.

These savings are huge. If we're using the mill, we have to check the tools after every part to make sure there hasn't been any tool wear. So, if we're running 150 of these, we have to stop and check the tooling every few parts. That's going to add to our cycle time.

With the rotary laser, we load the part, the laser finds the face of the part, and we hit cycle start. Three minutes later we can unload the finished part and load the next one right away.

Were you using any fixturing?
That's another area of savings. Using the rotary laser, we don't need any complex fixtures because there is no force being placed on the part. If we mill the part, we'll need specialized fixtures holding both ends. This ensures the part doesn't move when the end mill is drilling and shaping the square window. This is one of the reasons setup time for the mill takes so much longer.

What difficulties result from going back and forth between production of a small part and a large part?
For milling, we couldn't even run the smaller part on the same machine as the large part. If we did have two parts that ran on the same machine, we might have to change our entire tooling package and fixturing and then qualify all the tools to make sure they are set up correctly. This takes hours, and we incur a lot of costs because of setup. Not having to do this for the laser is just a huge savings. The laser is fast and easy. In fact, we think the ability to go right from a large part to a small part is one of the laser's strong benefits. We can run both the large part and small part on the same machine by chucking a smaller chuck up to the standard chuck - which takes maybe five minutes. After the small part is done, we can go right back to the large part again. No major setup or fixturing.

How often do you need to do a short run or a one-piece order?
It's becoming more and more frequent. As a corporation, we took on the goal of lean manufacturing about five years ago with the objective of achieving profitable one-piece production. Short runs hold down inventory costs and those savings contribute to the company's profitability.

How has the rotary laser helped you achieve your company's goal of lean manufacturing?
The laser lets us efficiently run very small lot sizes - even an order of one or two parts. We can run those parts without long setup times and fit them into the flow of our shop. We don't have to run 50 parts to amortize the setup time and then put the extra parts that were not sold to the customer into inventory. So we're cutting down on inventory and overhead, and we're only producing what's already been ordered.  Furthermore, this extra time allows us to meet the demands of our customers.

Overall, we've realized an average 75% savings by running parts on the laser. Some of our individual components can cost $20,000 or more. If we can cut the time down by 75%, we're saving thousands of dollars on each part we cut.

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