Manufacturing and machine shops are the backbone of the American economy. These industries produce the products the country needs and wants. Over the years, many companies moved their manufacturing operations overseas due to the rising costs of manufacturing products in the United States.
Recently though, manmid west 1y technological advancements have been made that are making the manufacturing process cheaper, and allowing for companies to bring their operations back to America.
The new equipment that is being installed by manufacturing and machine shop companies helps to save costs and expenses for the long term, as new people will not have to be hired to perform the work these machines do. These new modular robotics can be put in front of machines and will robotically load or unload them. A big advantage of them is that they are not permanently set in their spots, and can be moved around the shop floor providing more versatility. In the past these robotics were dedicated to a specific machine, but now they can be moved or changed to fit different machines on the shop floor.
For inspection purposes these new robotics have camera sight vision. This special optical vision can look at the shape of a part and immediately check all of the dimensions. This is important for quality control as multiple inspections can be done very quickly to provide inspection statistics to the customer. In the past it used to take a long time with a human inspecting each part by hand, and measuring the specs of the part to make a report for the customer. This new technology speeds up the process and can post the information from its software, directly into spreadsheets that can be sent to the customer. It also takes the frustration out of the same common mistakes occurring on an ongoing basis. If the camera finds a bad part, in an advanced application if so desired, it will kick it off the conveyor into the scrap bin without slowing down the overall inspection process at all. Other wise in the smaller Job shops the QC Department just has to load and unload the parts seconds apart to achieve their report.
The new camera robotics that are available are now feasible and affordable for manufactures and average machine shops. It is an investment for smaller operations that will pay off long-term dividends. At Mid-West Screw Products we see that this is the way of the future, and are ready to be at the front of this movement that will bring manufacturing back to the USA and help business be profitable and successful for our next 70 years to come.