THE ACCURACY CUBE is already running at full capacity performance

Last November saw the culmination of the roof of the new advanced manufacturing center, putting the final touch on a project carried out over the last two years that is now bearing fruit. Months have been spent designing and implementing the advanced manufacturing processes done inside it and the results have become palpable.

This is a very powerful project that has called for a complete change of mindset for everyone involved. Director of strategic development and Accuracy Cube manager summarises what is happening inside the 1200 square metre spectacular white space that is home to the JUARISTI workshop that way. Since it began operating around a year ago, the advanced manufacturing center has revolutionised how production is understood at JUARISTI.

We have had to learn a lot, design completely new processes and work every day on continuous improvement, but we started to see results from the start. The Accuracy Best+ process is based in Lean Manufacturing techniques and it has a clear goal, which is to optimise the preparation, adjustment and verification processes to ensure the optimal performance of all the components before the final assembly. Our processes have become a lot more precise. Before, if something was off and it made a machine not work properly it showed up after assembly and we had to disassemble and check all the components. That phase could drag out several weeks. But now that we have managed to completely eliminate that step, we have increased productivity considerably.

The change in mentality that has put precision at the center of all JUARISTI’s work

The Accuracy Cube team is made up of 15 professionals who work exclusively at the advanced manufacturing center and it includes a lot of young people who have been trained from the bottom up. Having a young team has made it easier to change mentality, because any transformation like this has a strong emotional element that has to be dealt with. They have had to learn to work with new equipment, accessories and tools in the process but having some of the company’s most expert workers on the team of mentors who are training them has helped considerably. We have an operator in the grinding area who is probably one of the best in the country.

The truly critical element the Accuracy Cube has contributed is improving the grinding and subsequent verification process of the pieces of the heads and structural components. With that, JUARISTI has increased its capacity for in-house grinding and has added the ability to measure and check every piece with a large volume Zeiss brand coordinate measurement machine (CMM), which is the most precise one for this volume of work. The CMM can achieve a precision of 3-5 micron on complete volumes and less than 1 micron on small pieces. Grinding is something we cannot outsource because nobody works with our tolerances. It may seem like an exaggeration, but in production at JUARISTI we use some grinding techniques that are at a top level internationally, with tolerances of 2-3 microns. And, when we have tried to outsource some machining to contractors, they have told us that providing those results was impossible for them.

Top of the Line Equipment

With the new equipment, at JUARISTI all critical parts can be ground, verified and re-checked internally with high productivity and maximum precision. It is a very complex and detailed process in which a lot of verification benchmarks need to be set up. At first, motivating everyone involved gave us some headaches because it required a lot more detail. But they got a taste for it quickly because the results are very satisfying in terms of precision and efficiency.

In the coming months, the manufacturing center will take a qualitative new step when its last machine is installed. The machine is a jig borer produced internally by JUARISTI that will be able to do milling operations and will also include a roughing module, which will increase the workshop’s machining capacity even more and increase the company’s productivity. The TH3 Jig Borer is specially designed to guarantee thermal stability and achieve maximum precision on pieces. It has technical details that make it an especially precise solution. With the machine, the center will be perfectly equipped to house all the company’s advanced manufacturing processes.