Ever wonder how much you could lower operating costs by running tooling that has been fine-balanced on a toolholder balancing machine? Haimer USA LLC wondered too, so it ran a series of studies.
Haimer produces more than 1,800 toolholders per day. It ran toolholders that had not been fine balanced after they were assembled and shelved for one week. The results were compared with the results of running standard, fully balanced assemblies.
The company found that on each machine, when running finebalanced tool/toolholder assemblies, the savings could be $20,000 per year when running one shift, almost $35,000 if running two shifts, and more than $40,000 if running three shifts. In the cost-reduction chart (above), note that the biggest savings comes from being able to run cutters a modest 10 percent faster than it could without fully balanced assemblies.
This holds true for slow or fast cutter speeds. Also, these savings did not include the better surface finishes, more accurate parts and the potential of less machine downtime.
