December 2008 Edition

CAD/CAM

Directory Assistance

Selecting pre-made parts and their designs from a catalog, for use in its complex assemblies, saves a shop time, money, and effort

Subcontracting standard pieces saves time, money, and effort when complex machines are being assembled. Instead of a shop making every part, it is wise to order shafts or ball screws from other companies. The savings grow exponentially when these parts are pre-made and the CAD drawings are ready to be incorporated into the shop’s design.

Since its founding in 1999 by president Scott Hale, Genesis Automation, St. Charles, IL, has remained focused on its core commitment to building high-quality, high-precision solutions to the production and test challenges with which its customers present it.

The custom designer and builder of automated assembly, test, and special process machinery works in the automotive, consumer electronic, pharmaceutical, appliance, telecommunication, fiber optic, and nanotechnology markets. Genesis is a supplier of engineered solutions to application-specific requirements.

"That means we don’t just take the labor out of labor-intensive jobs," Hale said. "Instead, we seek projects where specific and complex assembly or production operations need to be performed with accuracy, often with in-process, in-line, or stand-alone testing devices for quality assurance."

"It doesn’t mean we reinvent ourselves on every job we do," Chris Reinert, operations director, said. "Quite the opposite. We capitalize on resident technology know-how, engineering talent, and the engineering and project tracking databases we maintain of parts, structures, robotic articulation devices, and proprietary testing strategies we’ve developed for solving customer challenges."

This knowledge is applied to every job, according to Reinert.

"We get to return to what we enjoy: providing advanced solutions that help our customers compete in a global market," Hale said.

From the Catalog to the Shop Floor

As both Hale and Reinert note, the company succeeds and remains ahead of the competition because of the alliances it formed with vendors, each of whom bring expertise and problem-solving assistance to Genesis.

One vendor is Misumi USA, Schaumburg, IL, a supplier of factory automation and mechanical assembly components. Components can be sourced in a unique way through the catalog. This results from Misumi’s CAD Configurator.

"When a shaft, coupling, ball screw, or hex post is needed, the engineers look through the print or online catalog, configure the part needed, then import a CAD drawing into a prototype assembly or test station. But, that’s just the beginning of the process," Mike Ricketts, the Misumi account manager for Genesis, said.

When needed, Misumi lets customers configure dimensions of a part to suit its needs. This is important to Genesis, as many of its customers operate in controlled environments that range from Class 100 cleanrooms to ultra-harsh environments involving corrosive liquids, where a low-temp black chrome plating or RoHS compliance, or a simple modification of a component’s fastening mechanism might be needed.

"All of these options with configurable components makes the design engineering job easier and faster," Ricketts said.

These upsides also extend to cost, both in design time and component investments. For a typical machine section, the Misumi way of doing business lets Genesis configure components, download native CAD files for importing into its assemblies, check the fit, confirm the assembly, and place orders for parts, all online.

Reinert said the savings in project design time through this system reaches into hundreds of hours. Beyond that, he said the cost of the delivered, configured component from Misumi can be less than producing the parts in the Genesis machine shop.

Information Exchange: On Goes the Lightbulb

It’s a beneficial situation for Genesis: its machine shop can focus on more complex parts and substructure production, and using the Misumi engineering data file, Genesis engineers can maintain a library of parts used on each project. The tracking software associated with the configured component orders lets a Genesis engineer access previous job files through Misumi to reapply existing component designs and legacy knowledge in new applications.

The ERP interface benefits both companies, in information exchange, speed, and efficiency.

Misumi is sensitive to proprietary designs and works with machine builders, such as Genesis, to keep confidentiality uncompromised. The Misumi engineers meet with Genesis during the design phase to contribute to the design strategy, the design review process, and the production process.

Misumi plays a role, according to Reinert, because it brings its application engineering expertise from thousands of projects to the task of assisting Genesis.

"We’ve had instances with Misumi when they had a ‘lightbulb’ moment with us or showed us the path of least resistance on a design that brought us substantial time and cost savings. That makes them more than a vendor to us," he said. "They’re invested in our success."

Profitable Multiplication

On one job, where a corrosive liquid was contacting a linear bearing rail assembly, Misumi suggested its low-temp, black chrome plating for the component. Pricing the components, especially those configured by Genesis, further assisted the customer.

"Our design and estimating processes benefit from the transparency of Misumi’s catalog pricing, both in print and through its Web Ordering System," Reinert said. "We can price out different design approaches, using the immediacy of the RFQ option on the Web Ordering System and know what’s feasible and what’s not. Also, ganging products for shipment saves inventory carrying costs, since the components, including those configured, can be delivered to our plant simultaneously and just prior to a build. This results in savings by a factor of five compared to what was our traditional method a decade ago."

Genesis often uses the express shipping options on configured Misumi parts, but the additional cost is offset by the absence of any tooling charge or minimum order requirement, Reinert said.

Systems built at Genesis Automation can contain up to 18,000 components and Misumi content can be as much as 55 percent, including shafts, bearings, plates, stands, brackets, ball screws, fasteners, actuators, and couplings.

Recently, Genesis fast-tracked the design and build of a prototype test fixture to demonstrate the solution to a problem for a fiber optic communications company. Misumi was able to provide the majority of the content for the prototype in less time and for less money than Genesis could have manufactured them internally, Reinert said.

The quality and performance of the device helped Genesis earn the contract to build the fully automated system.

"Time-saving is a key to our success and the Misumi business model meshes seamlessly with our own," Hale said. Misumi USA

Visit www.rsleads.com/812mn-207 for more information

What do you think?
Will the information in this article increase efficiency or save time, money, or effort? Let us know by e-mail from our website at www.ModernApplicationsNews.com or e-mail the editor at pnofel@nelsonpub.com.