Instead of investing in an external robotic loading system, this shop adopted technology that lets a machine tool use its spindle to load and unload parts. Every day, test engineers at Krefeld, Germany-based Deutsche Edelstahlwerke Specialty Steel (DEW) determine the quality of the steel it produces by way of tensile and notched-bar impact tests. With a length of 55 mm and a square cross section of 10 by 10 mm, the standardized test specimens are rather unspectacular from a machining perspective. Yet their production requires one operator to manually load about 2,500 individual samples each month.
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