In The Trenches with Joey

There is something to be said for natural
talent. Take Joey Howard for instance. Joey manages our punch and
laser departments here at Metcam. To quote his wife Stacey who
also works at the company; he has been here 23 or 24 years I am
guessing she has been here about the same amount of time.

 
Joey is one of those loyal employees with a strong work ethic who
worked his way up through the ranks graduating Magna Cum Laude from
the University of Hard Knocks.  He is one of
those rare folks that can think on his feet and who is not afraid
of failure when trying resolve problems.  I
can’t think of a time when he has not brought a possible
solution to a problem to the table.  In other
words he doesn’t just say “It’s broke” he
says “It’s broke and here’s what I think we need
to do.”  So it was; a few months ago he
came to me to discuss a problem he was having with the Automatic
Loader on the Laser cell.

Metcam
operates a dual laser
cell that is automatically loaded and unloaded with a rather
large pick and place unit.  The cell operates
unattended for the most part.  The pick and place
unit retrieves sheets from a material tower and places them on one
of the laser cutting tables.  Each laser has (2)
tables making for a quick change of material. 
While one table is in the cut another is being unloaded and
reloaded automatically by the loader.  Suction
cups are used to grip the blank sheets during
loading.  A series of “forks” extend
into grooves on the table and raise the parts and
“skeleton” up to be moved to a shakeout
area.  Once the parts have been moved to the
shakeout area the whole process repeats.

The unloading forks are attached to large
aluminum extrusions that move on a series of linear
slides.  The slides receive a large amount of
wear and eventually have to be replaced costing around $10,000 just
for parts - downtime and labor not included!

This problem has bugged Joey for some
time.  Recently the slides needed to be replaced
and he was determined to figure out a way to add some additional
support to the device to reduce wear, save $$$, and extend the
slide life.  He stopped by my office one day and
ran an idea by me.  He wanted to install a series
of linear rails attached to the loader frame providing additional
support to the existing slide mechanisms.

Overall it was a great idea with exception to
a weight issue.  Linear rails would need adequate
support to minimize deflection.  After reviewing
the options we walked out and took a look at the
machine.  Joey’s approach was the only
reasonable way to fix the problem but we were concerned about the
weight not to mention the labor to make the
modification. 

After closer inspection a light bulb turned
on!  8020 my
favorite way to build cool stuff!  I loaned my
8020 bible to Joey and in a
couple of days he had designed and created a bill of materials.

Joey attached (2) of 8020’s larger
extrusions to the frame, installed a couple of wheel assemblies
also from 8020, attached the wheel assemblies to the existing
extrusion and in the words of the famous chef from New England who thinks he
is from Louisiana BAM!