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Skidding machines, Sounds Simple Enough
Skidding machines, one of the most difficult jobs when it comes to IMTS. We call it packing ten pounds in a 5 pound bag. We have talked about in previous blog postings about the jigsaw puzzle that our truck is, but fitting everything on the skids is an art form. On the bigger projects like the bedrock we have the machine, JIC Cabinet and coolant filter. We fit all of that on a 64” x 96” skid. Nothing can hang off especially on the 96” dimension as it would hang off the side of the truck.
We keep all of our machines on the skids at the show. If you look at the show photos you will see that they are all on platforms, these are the skids, we pop off a tiled side and the forklift can just get under it and drive away. Easy. We do not need any spotting of machines which saves around $2500.00 in rigging costs on the inbound and outbound. It also saves a ton of time. The machines come off the truck, and get put right into the chalk line markings. Truck to booth and spotted, less than 5 minutes per machine
On Saturday we skidded all of our machines, plus packed a few other Miscellaneous Skids for Saturdays ship date. With the Help of 6 guys this is the equivalent of asking your buddies to help you move for the 12th time in a year. Not a fun job, but it has to get done. During the course of the morning we found a few things:
- A misplaced cross beam means we get out the Herman Munster Homemade Sledge Hammer ( 4×4 Steel block Welded to a 4’ long pipe) to put another cross beam into the skid.
- It is possible to get stuck under a skid trying to put a bolt in. I will forever think I was set-up for the photo that is shown here. They had to pull me out by the feet.
- Sometimes the best laid plans and autocad layouts just do not work out as originally planned.
- Bedrock + Coolant and Filter+ Electrical Cabinet = more that a 5,000 lift can handle. Solution: Machine bed counterweights. Number needed … 8 to keep the back wheels of the forklift on the ground.
By 1:00 we were all pooped and happy its finished. Un-skidding them happens September 25th come join the fun if you ...
With two weeks to go before shipping a lot is going to happen. The basic plan in place for this week is to get all the machines finalized and running, then on Saturday everything is to be re-skidded onto their pallets. In our booth we leave the machines on their pallets and make them look nice. It is less expensive to do it that way and to be blunt no one really ever notices or says anything.
I am fortunate that I am Involved in the Association for Manufacturing Technology. This trade association is not only instrumental in the production of IMTS, but they have an arm that looks out for Manufacturing’s best interests in Washington. Some of the Tax cuts that aided machine tool builders in the past 10 years were lobbied for by this association.
As part of AMT on Thursday I went to Chicago for a final meeting to review the show with 8 other exhibitors. We all have been around the trade show world for many years now and we range from large companies like Haas to companies like ourselves. Our goal is to give a voice to the exhibitors and help the direction of the show from a behind the scenes. During our visit to GES we saw a lot of the ideas we discussed for two years come to life. It should be a really good show with can’t miss Keynote speakers, and a really cool Emerging Technology Pavilion. Lockheed Martin will have a Fighter Jet on the floor also in the West Building
From concept to reality, we have been talking about the Bedrock series for a while now. This new machine platform besides being really cool looking offers a ton of advantages for production grinding. You can see that the machine is done and is getting tooled out for the show this week also. In about a week you can visit our web site booth6646.com for videos of all our machines in our booth.
If you cannot come to IMTS 2010 this website will give you the same experience as if you were in Chicago . Once the machines are on site we will re-take the videos for all to see the parts grinding , and the booth up and running. Until then we ...
Bedrock is Done
Wednesday of this week serves as our first customer demonstration for our NEW bedrock series of centerless grinders. One of the first blogs that was written included a photo of the machine’s bed being machined at Rock of Ages in Vermont. Now the design has come to life and is a machine tool that is grinding applications to under .000010” roundness. 
After our demonstration on Wednesday for a customer we will be starting to tool out the machine for IMTS. Outside of the machines new design, and superior accuracy we will have some other pretty cool accessories on it.
- New Magazine Feeder design that is easier to load parts into a hopper for longer unattended operation
- In corporation with Laser Linc we will have integrated into the machine a new LobexTM Lobing Detection System. It performs real-time analysis of centerless ground products to detect and report a constant diameter but out-of-round condition due to lobing of any frequency (e.g. 3, 5, 7, 9…).
- A full machine enclosure that gives full access to the machine from any angle
- New Software features for programming in virtual templates for CNC Dressing. This integrated system enables you to design your part or template on the machine’s interface. This tool also interfaces with your engineering software to bring the solid model on-board to your centerless grinder. From there it generates the Excel worksheet which will either dress your wheel or grind your part without ever seeing a G or M code.
We thought of everything, including a tool tray on an articulated arm that will keep your machine neat and clean, multiple language support, Internet connectivity for lights out grinding, and even a utility that can have the machine e-mail machine production statistics at a hourly frequency.
All of this adds up to pretty cool new machine.
33,000 Pounds in a 21 Day Window
Vacation is upon us and after this week Royal Master shuts down manufacturing for two weeks. You can still call and get parts and if I never told you that we were shut down you probably would never have known. Lori stills answers the phone and we all answer our e-mails as if it was business as usual. On Friday our shipping manager
Glen pointed out that we only had 21 working days before we ship IMTS when we get back from vacation. Maybe he was hinting to leave him a long list of things to do while he worked over shut down, or looking for me to say “ that’s plenty of time “.
With 21 days left there is a whole lot to do, but we are in pretty good shape. Skids are built according to the jigsaw puzzle that we call a truck layout, machines are all on line and most are finished. We are just waiting on some feeding components from vendors.
The truck layout is one of the most fun things associated with the planning of the show. It has been called fitting 10 pounds of “candy” in a 5 pound bag . Trucking is expensive and a source of stress. Having everything out of our control after pain staking working on the machines for 
3 months is a minor part of the stress, but then when you think about it, a stranger taking over 2 million dollars of equipment hurdling down Route 80 at 70 mph can give anyone a chance to pause for more than a second.
Setting up the layout for the truck is like a jigsaw puzzle, everything fits, and has a place. Put it in the wrong place and you have a bad case of the head scratches while you figure it out. Fitting 7 machines, a tradeshow display, support materials for a weeks in a 8’ x 48’ space is just plain old fun. We actually build the skids to fit the truck dimensions to minimize any empty voids. The record for empty space was in 2006 with a whopping 6” of empty room at the back of the truck. I will admit that we tape ...
