[MUSIC] Welcome to Digital Manufacturing and Design or DMD dialogue session. As your moderator, I will take you into companies where we will have conversations with industry partners who share our manufacturing passion. More specifically, they share our passion for how digital manufacturing and design is transforming the industry [MUSIC] We're extremely fortunate to be able to share some firsthand experiences with you. >> This DMD dialogue session will focus on discrete manufacturing. Today, we're visiting V-Lake Industries. V-Lake Industries is a Buffalo-based machine shop that's been servicing the western New York area for over 20 years. We offer a wide range of CNC machining services, multiple vendor-based amenities, and an array of custom work. The V-Lake Industries facility is equipped with state-of-the-art machinery that provides high precision and high volume production. We'll explore their 2 and 3D million technologies, their turning technologies, CNC routing capabilities and their inspection procedures. Let's go to V-Lake, everybody. [MUSIC] >> A customer will generally send in a quote, or request for a quote, with the number of pieces they're looking for, a drawing. I will go through that drawing, look at what the requirements are from materials, finishing, give an estimate of how much time I think it's going to take for us to do that on what machine. I'll put those numbers into our ERP system. So it will give me a good estimation of how much that job is going to cost us to make, and how much we should charge for it. I'll pass that information on to Keith. He will make a decision, final decision on what the price of that will be. I will load that back into our ERP system, those final prices, issue the quote from that system to our customer. If it's accepted, they'll issue a purchase order. I can then load from the quote that we gave directly onto the order. I will, [MUSIC] Process the order in our system, which automatically takes the raw material inventory out of our system. Will automatically generate some scheduling for our mills. I will print out routers for each one of those, we have a folder for each part. If it's a new part, I'll make a new folder that'll contain the drawing, a blank inspection report based on the dimensions of the drawing. And pass that on to the production manager. >> Once Dave types up the order, then it hits my desk. So I approve the delivery date to make sure that we have what's in front of us, and if we can make the delivery date. And then from that point it would either, if it's a new part, I would program it. If it's existing jobs, it would go on the floor to get cut and run. We use Mastercam, which is a cam software. So I receive a 3D model, I put it into my cam software and put it in, orientate it the same way it would be done in the actual machine. And then from there I start creating tool pads from that geometry on the 3D model. Once that's done I post out the program. So what it does is it takes it from the computer language and puts it into the CNC machine understands, G code, M code. And from there on we go to the machine. >> The first piece gets machined at the mill, or the lathe, depending on what product it is. The operator will do the initial inspection of that piece. When he's happy with it, it goes to our quality engineer. He will do a complete full inspection of that part. >> So, I receive a part and some of the main tools I use are digital calipers. I'll use that to check a length, or a width, or a whole location. I might use gauge pins to check a diameter of a hole. Or the width of a small slot or something. If it's a critical, tight tolerance I might use a micrometer. It's a radius gauge, it kind of varies to the feature that I'm checking. The CMM, it's used with a computer program. And the way we use it, is we get a solid model from the customer. We take that model and we map out all the features on it on the computer. And then we use the CMM to track were does features are on the part and make sure they're in the proper locations. It uses a probe, the probe pretty much locates all the different features and just compares to the solid model. >> Once he's happy with that, that piece goes back out to the operator and to continue on with the rest of the run. In between time, the operator is checking each part as it comes out of the machine for some critical dimensions to make sure everything's still on spec. Nothing's changed in the machine, the material hasn't moved or anything like that. In addition, our quality engineer is going around and checking. >> Take one, just randomly, out of the sample of what we've ran today and I take that back to my office. I check it fully against the print, so I check every single dimension. And then I check the finish and everything totally to the print specifications. And then I have a log where I indicate that it's good, we can keep running that part. Or it's not good, then I have to tell the operator or tell the production manager, to stop running that part. And we have to figure out what the problem is and fix it before we can continue production. >> Once the machining is finished it will go on to the finishing area. So a lot of the parts need to be either deburred, polished. It'll go back to the quality department, it gives it one final visual and tactical check. And then it's ready for shipping, or it's ready for for plating. If it's ready for plating, it goes on to our plating rack, goes out to plating, comes back. It's another visual check to make sure nothing's happened to it while it's at plating. The plating is adhered, there's no issues with it. Once we're happy with that, then it's ready for shipment. We do collect all of our inspection data. Whether it's a manual form that has all of the dimensions, conventional information on it that the operator and the quality engineer are filling out. Once we are ready to ship that part and everything is appropriately filled out on there and we're happy with the quality of the part. That information is scanned and saved to your system. So we have a digital library of all the parts that we make. The drawings are in there, the completed inspection report. So a history of all the parts that we've made on that part by purchase order. So we can go back and look at each one, at the inspection date that we recorded for each one of those parts.
