Automation Looming for U.S. Machine Shops : Federal Lab Breaks Trail by Test Run

Nearly everything that people touch, all manufactured products, involve the use of metal-cutting machine tools.

In countries such as Japan and Sweden and West Germany, the machine-shop owners are automating their lathes and drills, saving time and gradually taking over the market that once belonged undeniably to the United States.

And yet in the United States, less than 11% of the machine tools in many metal-fabricating industries are computerized; fewer than half the plants have installed automated machines, and, even among plants that have invested in computerized automation in the last five years, only about one in six machines is computerized.

But U.S. machine shops are beginning to automate, and one government research lab will be showing small companies how to do so without going into the red.

Next month, the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, which is about 30 miles south of Baltimore, will open an automation-technology project that it calls the Shop of the ‘90s.

Help Small Shops

The project is designed to help small metal-working shops gain on foreign competitors by automating their operations with inexpensive, off-the-shelf computers and software available now at any computer store.

At the national institute, Adrian Moll created the demonstration project by modernizing his own 56-employee machine shop, called the Fabrication Technology division. There, workers design and build the special instruments and equipment used by institute researchers.

Until last year, the institute was the Bureau of Standards, where scientists built measuring instruments and systems that gave science and industry a basis for accurate measurement. In 1988, the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act changed the federal research lab’s name and its focus.

Now, its 3,000 scientists also build better integrated circuits, develop tougher industrial ceramics, create improved enzymes and transfer these discoveries to U.S. companies.

At any given time, about 200 companies or organizations are sponsoring cooperative research at the institute on such projects as new measurement and quality control technology.

Thousands of Calibrations

Its products include thousands of instrument calibrations that often are essential for safety and quality control in industrial operations, and its standard reference materials are used nationwide to ensure the accuracy of clinical lab tests.

During the last year, Moll and his division staff installed and taught each other to use a personal computer network that allows them to automate routine machine-shop activities such as estimating costs, planning manufacturing processes, managing the tool room, tracking jobs and costs, and designing and manufacturing products.

Automating his own shop, Moll says he “ran the project the same way a small machine shop would. We didn’t buy anything until we needed it. All the equipment was bought piecemeal, then installed when we had time.” Still, he kept the shop up and running, and profitable, during the entire process.

A shop owner’s average cost to put a similar system to work, Moll says, would range from $5,000 to $20,000, depending on how much of the software a company decided to buy. “Shopping around helps,” he adds. The yearlong project cost $300,000, including the cost of visiting manufacturing technology centers around the United States to talk about the project.