Last year was quite successful for American manufacturing. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) Fourth Quarter survey from December of 2017 confirms it.
94.6% of those surveyed in December said they were positive about their company’s outlook. It was only 89.8% in September.
Confidence was only 56.6% in Q1 of 2016. According to NAM, companies expect their production to increase 5%, with an anticipated 5.2% growth in sales, and an expected 2.2% increase to employee wages.
58.7% feel American manufacturing is heading in the right direction. Those who felt it is going in the wrong direction were in the minority at 21.4%. 32.2% told NAM they were “unsure,” but it is in our nature to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Read on!
This archived copy of the January 2018 SFA newsletter focuses on machine monitoring options.
In 2018, you could increase your productivity by 25 percent, as well as take on lights-out manufacturing and make more profits without buying new machines. How?
Machine monitoring can help you increase utilization and take an active role in making sure your machines are being used to their potential. Regardless of the manufacturing equipment you use or the industry you are in, your goals are the same: OEE, Productivity, and Profitability.
2017 was a monumental year for the manufacturing industry. Help the Made in America movement thrive by making sure your shop floor is as productive as possible.
Shop Floor Automations is holding a machine monitoring webinar focused on DataXchange January 10th. Be sure to request to be part of this free event, while you still have time!
DataXchange is the ultimate machine monitoring option for the manufacturing industry, and Shop Floor Automations is the number one reseller and integrator of the software.
Call (877) 611-5825 for DataXchange pricing, which includes affordable Cloud-based options and on-premise solutions.
Our customers at R & D Manco were on the January 2018 cover story for Modern Machine Shop.
Shop Floor Automations, the company’s machine monitoring provider, shares the story.
“Machine monitoring has been another important factor in R&D Manco’s success,” states MMS editor Peter Zelinski within the feature piece.
Basic machine status data and studying the data to find downtime causes was very important. It was noted as “the shop’s most powerful resource for realizing machining capacity improvements.”
OEE monitoring is crucial for manufacturers. Knowing the utilization of all production equipment is becoming a daily need on the shop floor.
There is likely old technology on your shop floor that is limiting your productivity. You are being robbed of time, profits, and resources in order to keep replacing them.
Who are the biggest offenders? Here is our top three list of dead technologies you should be replacing on your shop floor immediately:
Suspect 1
Floppy disks, or as kids these days know it, the “save” symbol on a computer word processing program.
Assuming you rightly do not trust used/refurbished floppy disks, you will have to hunt down packages of new floppy disks and hope they work. At about 1.44MB of space on each disk, the question is, why would you want to hang onto this old media source?
Answer: The Floppy Connect (floppy drive emulator) will replace this process. The hardware acts as if the floppy drive were never removed. Need: maximum 2GB USB flash drive for it. Keep using the same stick.
Suspect 2
Switch boxes are best described as manual distribution boxes. They vary from two to 16 switches, or two to 16 connections to one serial port.
You manually have to flick a switch to tell the box which of those you want to send the program to. Remember when you had to get up to change a channel on the TV set? It’s similar to that!
Answer: The USB Connect Switch Box model automatically does the switching for you. It controls data flow into the CNC from the PC. The hardware also has built-in DNC Firmware for CNC flexibility and is easy to use.
Alternate Answer: There is also the Ethernet Connect, which creates virtual serial ports. This means no more manually switching and better yet, it helps you leverage your existing corporate network infrastructure.
Suspect 3
PCMCIA cards are memory cards that have been used in the past on shop floors to get programs uploaded and downloaded to CNC machines. These credit-card-sized antiquities are hard to come by, expensive, and can be damaged by constantly removing them from the controller.
Answer: The USB Connect uses a standard USB drive for program storage and meets the communication needs of a variety of CNC machines. This is regardless of machine’s age, make or model.
Three models available: a Switch Box model, a standard model, and a Mazak model for sending/receiving Mazatrol CMT files.
Alternate Answer: Another replacement solution is DNC software for networking your machines to a PC in order to upload and download programs.
If you are still using any of these old pieces of technology, we urge you to contact us at (877) 611-5825. You would be surprised how easy and affordable it is to modernize your shop floor production.
https://www.shopfloorautomations.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SFA-Site-Logo-300x138.jpg00Greg Mercuriohttps://www.shopfloorautomations.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SFA-Site-Logo-300x138.jpgGreg Mercurio2018-01-03 00:24:362022-05-18 10:50:423 Dead Pieces of Shop Floor Technology
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Last year was quite successful for American manufacturing. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) Fourth Quarter survey from December of 2017 confirms it.
Last year was quite successful for American manufacturing. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) 
This archived copy of the 
Not receiving the Shop Floor Automations newsletter, even though you subscribed?