Heshel Machine Co. LLC

As CNC Machining - San Diego pointed out on my post yesterday, I forgot to include a video of the actual tool cabinet on the shop floor at Heshel Machine Co. LLC. Wanted to follow up and share it here to get your thoughts, and hopefully see how others are setting up their own systems! This setup continues to work really well for our two-person shop (one full-time, one part-time). The bin colors correspond to different subdivisions of our tool library, and the labels are designed to give just the right amount of information when you’re in the middle of a setup. (Yes I know we don't have every box filled just yet!) Each label shows: -Which subdivision of the library the tool belongs to -The tool number -A short description of the tool I also added a QR code that links directly to the manufacturer’s product page, along with a small reference image for quick visual confirmation. This level of organization has allowed us to handle a large percentage of our day-to-day setups using just two drawers, which has been a huge efficiency win. As a bonus, you can also see how we organize our ER collets! Always interested in seeing how other shops approach tool organization. #machining #cncmachining #machineshop #tooling #manufacturing #shoporganization #machinistlife #metalworking

A question for all the fellow #machinists and shop owners out there! This is something I genuinely enjoy talking about, because everyone in this industry seems to have a different philosophy on it. Tool libraries! At Heshel Machine Co. LLC, we run what looks at first glance like a very large tool library. In practice, though, it saves us a huge amount of setup and programming time. Instead of having a small set of tools that permanently live in the machine, we keep roughly 90% of the tooling for any given job ready to go, and this is reflected in our #fusion360 library. Every tool has a defined SKU, tool ID, and a dedicated bin in our shop-floor tool cabinet (shown in the video). What this allows us to do is standardize our day-to-day tooling by material and feature. Feeds, speeds, and templates are already thought through. Another big benefit we’ve seen is visibility: it’s easy to identify what’s already loaded, and more often than not, if a machine just ran a similar material, most of the tools you need are already in there. For example, since we cut so much aluminum, our three most-used 3-flute end mills almost always live in the machine. The last major win for us is tooling spend. This approach has significantly reduced how many non standard or job specific end mills we buy. Most of the time, the library already covers the part unless there’s a truly unique feature driving the requirement. I’ve heard strong arguments for this approach, and just as many for the “keep it simple” method. Minimal set tools and mostly job-specific setups. I’m curious to hear what’s working in other shops. Always good to learn from each other! #machining #cncmachining #machineshop #tooling #manufacturing #metalworking #fusion360