The deco

In the last years, precision machining workshops and companies have increased their automation to compete in a globalized market that offers a multiplicity of possibilities, not only in our borders, but in any country in the world. An advantage, which in turn has been driven by the need to adapt to the situation of the moment that responded to the rivalry by offering quality products at low prices. All this competed with the fact of achieving low costs that affected, in the least, the final price of the product. Costs like low wages offered in developing countries, where there are also better, for example, tax advantages that favor the transfer of production to those nations.

Currently we are in a moment of constant change. What triumphs today, tomorrow can lead us to perdition. The forecasts predict great expectations in the field of precision machining and in the development of technology that is more precise and faster, allowing us to increase the pace of productivity, as well as the quality of the products we offer.

But what is the future prospect of precision machining?

We will probably move to a point that goes beyond simple automation. In addition to this, surely many other changes will occur in the trends that we have seen so far in recent years, to influence as predicted productivity, flexibility and speed of service.

Within the machining companies, a sector that is strongly in question and that has the future hanging on a thread, is the one of the sewing machine.

The name decoletaje comes from the French «décolletage» and designates the manufacture of pieces of revolution (screws, shafts, pins …) and final cutting operation of the piece, machining material in bar (or in roll), separating it by start of Chip using a cutting tool, for mass production, whether in small, medium or large batches.

This operation that defines the sealing is the so-called, known, cutting or mowing of the piece, which consists of this cut, or separation of the bar piece, by a tool called reaper.

The sealing is carried out, mainly, in automatic lathes. These automatic lathes can be controlled by cams (conventional), or more recently, by the technology that prevails in the sector today and that is expected to continue to evolve: the numerical control (CNC).

The diameters range from 0.1 millimeters to 38 millimeters in diameter. Beyond these ranges of diameters, the way of working is different, because it speaks of accuracies very millimeter (one hundredth of a millimeter), or even less.

Speaking, however, of the world of today’s sealing, and according to the current that are being followed by precision machining, one of the concerns that exists today in the world of sewing, is the shortage of qualified personnel. It is paradoxical, seeing the current situation and the current unemployment rates, that the mechanized companies are trying to hire professionals and qualified personnel, and do not succeed.

El crecimiento proyectado referente a las generaciones futuras, cuanto a la fuerza de trabajo que debe garantizar los oficios del futuro: en los próximos años será claramente dependiente de una generación surgida del denominado baby boom que ha habido en la última década. El problema, pues, radica en que nos enfrentamos a una pirámide poblacional con un acentuado hueco generacional que ha ocasionado la existencia de dos grandes grupos poblacionales: uno muy mayor, y otro demasiado joven.

So much so that the main problem of many machining companies, will not be the lack of orders and orders, but the lack of qualified staff to respond to those customers.

The future is just around the corner. The future is tomorrow and we have to try to visualize it, even broadly, to anticipate and continue working on it.

The emergence and development of this industry of sealing has been a great push for the general industry of precision machining, but especially, for example, within the automotive sector.

The daily life of our day to day has absorbed us. Today it is more than normal to move from one end of a territory to another in a short time, thanks to trains that cover these distances at times, impossible, times. To fly from one side of the globe to the other in a few hours, connect to the global information through any mobile device: tablets, iPADs, smartphones … The world changes, constantly evolving at breakneck speed and we, closely integrated in the technology that develops, we must do the same.

It is strange, seeing the course of events, observe how in some workshops and machining companies still live apart from the latest technologies of the sealing. And, even worse, to know that there are places in which they do not even care to know those new tools that appear every day; The new machines and procedures that allow to mechanize pieces more and more complex.

Without this knowledge, in an increasingly competitive environment, survival becomes impossible without innovating in machinery and processes. The future of precision machining and decoking is through innovation and training.

At Mecanica Curiel we tried it. Now we want to know your opinion, what is your vision of the precision machining workshop of the future?