German automotive parts via Alabama: German automotive parts machined on German machines have their origin in the U.S. Deep Sout

On the face of it, Cottondale, AL, may seem an unusual place for a German machine tools firm to make automotive components for a German car, but Smith's Machine proves how the automotive industry has become a world market. The 30-person shop, founded in 1974 by Woody Smith and run today by his sons Robert and Tim Smith, supplies machined parts for the Mercedes Benz U.S. International--MBUSI--facility in Tuscaloosa County.

The process began as a joint venture in 2000 between Smith's Machine and two German companies, Eberspaecher Formenbau and Hummel Formen, both of Stuttgart, Germany. Through contacts made during that association, Smith's became familiar with DMG machine tools.

Today, more than a dozen of the machines operate in controlled work cell environments to produce CNC-machined bar stock and castings for the automotive and other markets, including indirect sales to MBUSI.

Smith's Machine produces most parts from low-carbon steels, including 1018, 12L14, 1045, and 1144. It runs 303 and 316L stainless as well. Castings machined are mostly Class 30 grey iron and ductile iron, 60-45-12 and 80-55-06. A Zeiss coordinate measurement machine is in-house for quality checks.

Part of Smith's business is supplying its local market with jigs, fixtures, and spare parts. Smith's Machine is ISO9001:2001 Certified.

Germans Count, But Not All of the Eggs Are in that Basket

According to Tim Smith, vice president of the company, the shop supplies other automotive companies besides Mercedes Benz, as well as tire manufacturers. Smith's is also a supplier to OEMs in the HVAC compressor, agricultural machinery, propane valve, stainless pipe fitting, marine diesel engine, underground mining industries, and other markets.

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To maintain its services, Smith's Machine added a 5-axis DMG 80U. The purpose of the addition was to reduce the number of operations in production parts, as well as enter markets such as defense and aerospace.

At the heart of the shop's operation are work cells dedicated to long runs. The cells contain DMG Twin mill/turn centers, fed by robotic part handlers. All machine motions are controlled by Siemens Sinumerik 840D CNCs for twin spindle, twin turret bar feeding, four-axis turning and four-axis milling on castings.

The CNCs incorporate the manufacturer's ShopMill and ShopTurn software suites for graphical and DIN/ISO programming, full machining simulation, and machine set-up and tool management. On the Twin Spindle machines, Smith's uses MF Programmer software designed by DMG for simulation and full cycle use the Siemens 840D offers.

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"The HMI controls on these machines offer us unlimited options in the cycles and control of the work planes," Smith said. "This lets us run almost all the features on the machine tool control. We benefit from our production run machine cells because we're able to keep the number of lines of code to a minimum with these features, instead of making standard ISO code from a CAM system."

Operators and programmers at Smith's revise running programs and implement changes on the fly.

Standardization

"Our shop now has control standardization and layout," Smith said. "The similar control architecture, even on different generations of machines, is a great help in cross-training our staff."

Smith said training from both the machine tool builder, DMG, and CNC supplier, Siemens, were at a high level, ranging from application engineering assistance to service issues and part refurbishment.

Thanks to the full PC in the machines, Smith's engineers can store programs on them and use routing back-up via the PC and Cisco wireless network.

"The Siemens Sinumerik 840D control was seamlessly used on the DMG Twin machines," Smith said. "Offset tables are generated and stored on the machine, while RG variables make the setup simple and fast. In each group of programs, we have one program of user-defined RG variables that carries all our setup information--stock size, part projection, transfer information, load/unload cycles--and other relevant automation factors.

"We can pull up the program and offsets, then change our collets/jaws and bar feeder. Then, we're ready to go without further setting workshifts or master offsets. We setup and run."

With the ShopMill and ShopTurn software, Smith's creates additional programs offline where training also occurs. Real-time, plain-language commands and high-resolution 3D graphic simulation offer end-users short online setups.

Smith said the DMG production cells and Siemens controls offered flexibility and let Smith's Machine seek other production runs from the automotive sector and other customers.

They, Robots

"These robotic work cells provide longer equipment use due to their speed and available options," he said. "Overall, these cells made us more competitive in automotive manufacturing. The automotive industry is one of our most lean manufacturing market segments, so we see multi-function machine tools and greater use of the robotic cells in our future." Siemens Energy & Automation

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