I don’t think that’s possible, not that I’m really part of that whole process. Some clients can be very lenient, while others can be very strict, especially about aesthetics, so having things that can change visually to the client is not the best alternative.
That cannot be accomplished, there are unfortunately too many variables that affect these. Like, I actually managed to force some sort of “standard” of having 95% of the crossmembers placed at 12" C/C, but that standard comes at certain prices. Changing that standard comes at other prices, such as loss of efficiency in production.
Every lb added to material is a lb less the truck can carry.
That’s why they hire skinny drivers …
If you quoted a certain size plate and it come it short, not much you can do.
If this happens alot, maybe order longer plate and trim it yourself. It add more work and cost but reduce headache and interuption.
Unless you have proven procedure to weld and lengthen any plate. We had procedure for most material. Even 10" thick plates.
One place I worked always machine all the edges. Much better fit and weld. Barrie Welding, Western Mechanical.
If every truck use different length plate, it’ll be nightmare to keep track.
That’s our current procedure, but even then it causes issues because the materials either come in late or with the wrong dimensions, and the shop wants to save the actual trim because we’re also trying to increase our production ratio.
Looks the company need to bite the bullet and stock more standard size material.
At least for the time supply is a problem.
I understand material price changes by the minute now. So management need to decide when, how much to stock at what price.
Management, accounting, purchasing and production need to work together to get pass current difficult time.
Layout all the solutions and problems. Decide which problems everyone can live with. Pick solution accordingly.
Pretty much. I was hoping there would be a magical out-of-the-box solution to save us all these little hassles but figured these are the types of intangibles that can’t really be controlled and must learn to deal with in time.
Indeed, but perhaps someone had done it already somewhere or had started thinking of something along that line. Sometimes, brainstorming like this can create new ideas/solutions much faster then by remaining alone with your own ideas.
It seems like the easiest solution to part of your problem is to try to remove the artificial restriction placed on you:
“We are asked to keep the welding to a minimum, when possible”
A submerged arc welding (SAW) machine would let you build up plates of whatever size you need from what you have on hand, and pretty quickly too (30lbs of weld per hour). It doesn’t solve the thickness issue, but it seems that length/width is the larger issue. The metal hull of every ship on the planet was likely built this way using SAW.
I was thinking similar with a jig seamer. I wasn’t around SAW but we had a ~16’ TIG seamer putting sheets of 304 or 316 together two shifts every day. SAW would have been sweeeet!
We’ve created a jig seamer also, but things just keep falling out of place, so for every solution we find, we have to find an alternative to something else. Most likely we’ll eventually run into a dead end and won’t be able to accomodate things and will have to close the shop until we can get the required components/material…
If you are a SW user, this really sounds like a DriveWorks solution. You can have a configuration sheet upfront indicate sizes and build from the values. You can also save the DW configuration and rerun in the future. I recall using DW to also calculate scrap, matl costs and weight. These calculations are then used to determine how to quote the customer for standard configurations and identify what products are truly customized vs configured.
I try to keep as far as away as anything that relies on Dassault to work, I have enough of SolidWorks.
Thanks for the suggestion though, that would indeed be a good application, though it would require quite the setup for something that is more of a temporary matter then permanent, even though the temporary is becoming rather extensive.
Indeed, but perhaps someone had done it already somewhere or had started thinking of something along that line. Sometimes, brainstorming like this can create new ideas/solutions much faster then by remaining alone with your own ideas.