Big Kaiser Factory Tour!

hi folks ultimate precision lean manufacturing Switzerland milling turning grinding and one of the
coolest integrations of a youth apprenticeship and internship program I've ever seen welcome to the big Kaiser factory to work just outside of Zurich Switzerland here we are what blew me away is this is not a large facility but there's a huge amount of production that goes on here so they're dealing with relatively confined spaces and they've got that handled through a pretty amazing efficiency automation cells and and really good workflows the area that we started our tour out in really surprised me because it's the internship or apprenticeship area and it's slightly separated from the manufacturing but not really and that is intentional because it matches the ethos of this company which is they treat their apprenticeships or their interns as a part of the internal company so the interns are actually doing quote unquote Job Shop work they may be bidding work they may be creating fixtures and their customer is the factory it is a hands-on way that got some manual machines they've got some of the classic internship type of equipment like files and hand deburring but then they've got state-of-the-art multi access CNC machines as well and you start to really appreciate and it's something I really would love to see in the US more of which is the value and the emphasis placed not only on internship programs but also bringing them up to speed with high skill production that matches the quality in the standards of the factory in the company itself here are the boring heads so this is how I originally got to know big Kaiser was I found them at emo when we were trying to figure out better ways to manufacture our fixture plates and I realized that the digital head was the solution cart here to that video short answer is the readout really takes out the guesswork of not only how you've adjusted it but if it's moved as you tighten it down so seeing one of the heads as it's being machined and it's state of production it's really cool here is another boring head but this one is

different this is big kaisers prototype for fully adjustable fully closed-loop integrated digital boring head what I mean by that is your cnc control can adjust the boring head diameter so you can have a probing cycle that would come in measure something and automatically adjust the boring head to take a spring pass to creep up on a very tight tolerance or so long as the boring head had sufficient travel range you could use one digital boring head tube or multiple different hole sizes I'm a little cynical on some of the industry 0.0 jargon and slang we hear but this to me is an actual legitimate example of amazing use of technology and integrating that with manufacturing workflows with cam with process reliability machine controls etc here is one of their fully integrated automated cell workflows if you're wondering why they chose that color this is actually a pretty cool story most machines 00 years ago were painted in these really dull drab dreary colors and Heinz Kaiser when he was buying these machines he wanted more sunlight he wanted more brightness he was more conscious of that working environment which is really way ahead of his time because that's a trend that we now see today so you have these brighter colors you have more natural sunlight so even though it's an unusual color really cool reason again being somewhat limited on space they're using a vertical storage solution so these are the work pieces incredibly high density and an incredibly small footprint this integrates with the robotic arm that's able to feed these into a multi machine cell where they've got both mill turn and five axis capability with a huge amount of tool redundancy when I see something like this now it just makes me smile because there's so much potential and so much flexibility to how you can run high-volume lights-out accurate production and it had one of the coolest things I have not seen that often in other factories which is an obstacle QR reader this closes the loop it reduces that risk when they setup tools offline that QR code handles that data set when they put the tool in you don't have to worry about typing data in incorrectly or assigning the wrong tool or the wrong pocket because this some nose and is able to scan that code this makes all the sense in the world to me I absolutely loved it and the little things like why has nobody else thought to put a gage length a reader behind the tool amount to give you an approximate idea of both gage length and stick out makes so much sense that's look at that backside tool yeah oh you that look at the grinding wheel they talked a lot about grinding if it's difficult to summarize just how awesome and important grinding is as a manufacturing technology but there's so many different types there's not just surface grinding but here we're looking at a creep feed grinding wheel and a company like big Kaiser they make Kaulitz they make tool holders they make boring heads and some of that work is done on traditional milling and turning machines including things like hard turning but a lot of that work relies on incredibly accurate grinding systems where they're using an abrasive wheel and you can really sneak up on incredibly tight tolerances and speaking of grinding that's the way to make incredibly accurate threads and that's what you need to have an incredibly accurate boring head so they talked a lot about the technique with which they use to grind and the pitch they used to grind the screws used in the bore heads it was really cool to be on this side of the shop because we've got all this specialty equipment creep feed grinder thread grinder surface grinders hones and what you see is a lot of highly specialized highly dedicated equipment that's really good at doing one thing and it really was the exact opposite of the other side of the factory where you saw relatively few machines given again the output of this facility where they've got that ability to run lots of different parts those same five axis machines are able to do support parts boring the heads the big Kaiser chip fan all within the same machine mix and matching as production demands it the tool management at big Kaiser was probably one of the most astounding things I've ever seen in a manufacturing facility now this takes a fair amount of infrastructure and setup to get there but I totally get it between the QR codes or RFIDs they have absolute knowledge they're able to know what collet got taken out where it's being used in what machine what its lifespan is and when you're able to set up a manufacturing facility like that I can't imagine you would ever want to do it any other way the system also takes care of the easy things for example when inserts get consumed or checked out and they hit a minimum trigger quantity automatically issues of Pio sends it out to the distributor of the supplier new inserts should arrive if they don't and time the system automatically notifies somebody really an efficient way to handle your purchasing because like je Pearson has talked about there's a difference between purchasing and procurement when I'm just buying stuff I already know I needn't have to invest skilled labor time and thinking about it it should just happen here they're showing how they'll get a work order ticket to set up a tool they'll grab that tool out of the inventory they'll use this brownie pre setter to check the run out to check the gauge like all of that data gets pushed up to their cloud via that QR code then the tool gets moved over to the machine the machine is able to pull that information out of the cloud confirm that things are correct confirm it's got the right offset information the right run-out information the right where comp information just amazing the other benefit to this system is it's actually incredibly flexible so these cabinets have no particular order to them the system knows where everything is so these are all tools that have already been set up and have actually already been used but are not at the end of their life so the system tells the operator where to put it back you know wrote a spot for and then when a job comes up that requires that tool again it tells them the tools already set up go grab it right here similarly if you need a specific collet and you're not seeing one the system can tell you there's not only one set up but it hasn't been used and say three months so you can just go ahead and take that one because it doesn't seem to be used the guy was joking that they found over a hundred and fifty Kaulitz and the internship program that they could pull back into the production environment we're now downstairs in their electrostatically controlled assembly department and they were showing us some of the test jigs that were actually Specht out by the engineering team but then built by the internship department and these were QC devices that are used in the process of setting up and calibrating the digital boring heads really cool now we're back up in their showroom remember seeing that creep feed grinding wheel this is what that's for this is one of their dual head boring bars and they've got this big roof system that allows course adjustments in your boring diameter size but maintains a very rigid setup and I thought one of the coolest tools ever it's called their torque fit now it's meant to work with the big Kaiser line of tools so if you have a certain size call it another milling Chuck this device knows the correct torque spec for that holder and you can use a traditional wrench whether it's a spanner wrench or a one-way bearing wrench in the torque measurement happens in this device which is genius you don't have to buy specific torque wrenches for every different size and adjust them for different torque ranges and you can even use this for other holders it won't give you a go/no-go output it'll just give you the torque value really cool the big kaiser tour as well as some of the other videos that we have coming up were part of this trip with the NT ma a national tooling and a machining association so it's really cool the format was we got this kind of inside peek and then the companies would take you to their showroom or their demo room and give you a really good in-depth technical presentation that was really a two-way street we could ask questions we could look at the technologies that they are both have that market right now as well as some of the stuff that they're working on and a unique chance to really see some cutting-edge tools pun intended here we're looking at one of the really cool dampening bars from big Kaiser so these have a tuned Mass dampener that's able to offer an incredibly rigid setup despite a really long gauge length so here they did a demo showing how aggressively they could cut with a traditional extension and then how much harder they could push the tool when they switched it otherwise apples to apples but switch it over to a dampening bar extension they also had a preview up of the automatic boring head where they're showing an iPad and how you can make adjustments either from an app or from your machine control really amazing