Meeting demand in a consistent, cost-effective manner requires balance and good forecasting. But sometimes it takes a little more due diligence to uncover the best way to increase throughput or meet rising demand.
Ultradent Products Inc., a leading developer and manufacturer of high-tech dental materials and devices for the medical industry, faced such a problem. The company sought to increase the production of its industry-leading Valo curing light, used by dental clinicians to cure dental composites, sealants, and various other chemistries.
Ultradent’s Valo curing lights are complex pieces of equipment, requiring numerous holes, finishes, and different geometries. In 2017, Ultradent required almost 50 minutes and three complex machining operations to produce one curing light housing.
Ultradent’s original manufacturing process involved hand-loading raw materials and finished parts; a cumbersome and sluggish process for a company that only had three employees on the shop floor per shift. The manufacturing setup resulted in the occasional spindle crash, hindering operations and output.
“We needed more reliability and faster cycle times,” said Ryan Umpleby, Sr. CAD/CAM programmer at Ultradent.
After engaging Methods Machine with their project requirements, Ultradent moved forward with two custom automation cells, each comprising of an advanced FANUC RoboDrill, a FANUC robotic arm, and raw stock storage. Methods designed the system to hold 60 blanks – uniform pieces of raw material ready for machining.
“This small RoboDrill with a robot arm was a little intimidating,” Umpleby said. “It’s smaller than a horizontal, it’s automated, and it’s got a robot.”
“Anytime you introduce something new, people can be hesitant,” added Kevin Marett, an engineering manager at Ultradent.
The automation cell provided actionable data points, delivered precise results, and cut the cycle time for a curing light housing in half – from about 45 minutes, down to a 21-minute average. With only three employees on the shop floor per shift, automating the process of loading/unloading material significantly improved Ultradent’s workflow.
With 24/7 operations underway, Ultradent increased its throughput almost threefold while also reducing machining costs associated with third-party processing.
“With the help from everybody at Methods, we were able to pull together and come up with fast solutions,” Umpleby said.
While the second RoboDrill automation cell was getting the job done on-time and under-budget, Ultradent needed to expand the system. So the company adopted a larger, third cell that boosted the blank capacity from 60 to 200.
After executing the idea, the company automated an entire production run of 200 curing light housings.
“That was a pretty cool milestone for me, to see Methods pull through that quickly on such a huge change to the cell,” he added.
Soon after, Methods added a fourth 200-capacity automation cell, bringing their total to four RoboDrills and four robotic components.
The RoboDrill cells run unattended for 16 hours a day and completely lights-out on the weekends. In addition to increased throughput and machine uptime, Ultradent has gained the desired repeatability thanks to the RoboDrill’s rigid construction and precision.
Since implementing the RoboDrill and automation cell, Ultradent’s quality assurance team has noticed a significant improvement in the machining accuracy of the curing light housing with perfectly threaded, 12-millimeter blind holes.
“The fact that the RoboDrill repeats on the threading and other features is pretty important to us,” Marett said. “As we go through inspection data for thousands of units, we find that features don’t move within a half a thousandth of an inch.”
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