What is poor tooling costing you?

Continuing with our Tooling Blog Series, have you thought about the potential consequences to your project when it comes to poor-quality tooling? Late deliveries? Line stoppage?

Good tool design will also take into account the need to adjust for:

• Part-to-part variation
• Future design changes
• Material and process tolerances
• Ergonomics – the human factor

This is especially the case with manual weld fixtures. Often the part “moves” in unexpected ways as it heats up and cools down from the welding process. Sometimes subcomponents need to be adjusted so that the final product remains within tolerance. The health and safety of the person welding needs to be considered to assure they can easily load and unload parts all day long without unnecessary fatigue from poorly designed clamps and net surfaces.

On occasion, we are awarded business that is being transferred to us because another supplier is failing to meet our customer’s quality, cost or delivery needs. Often, tooling is also transferred along with that business. In almost every one of these situations, our tool engineers and welders say, “No wonder!” and proceed to rebuild or replace shoddy workmanship with world-class tools.

What is poor tooling costing you? How would you know?

Learn more about tooling best practices in our blog series.