Traditionally a milling and turning company, Smiths Machine first teamed up with DMG and Siemens in 2000 to establish a single machine tool platform. This brought about a synergistic approach to complex milling and turning: an advantage that took on greater significance when the company decided a few years later to focus on the defense and aerospace markets.

“Siemens controls were available on DMG milling and turning machines, and that was a natural fit for us,” Smith recalled. The DMG/Siemens platform has enabled Smiths Machine to establish and maintain a high level of operational proficiency. The central advantage here, Smith said, has been the ability to invest in, train, and keep his people moving forward with a stable technology platform.

“The technology and the people using it are the backbone of our organization,” Smith asserted. “Even with 25 machines, we can share knowledge between the milling and the turning machines. The common control is a Siemens Sinumerik 840D sl. Our technology purchases are based on where we want to be in ten years, not on a workforce that is fractionally trained and a platform that can rapidly deteriorate due to a change in market condition or a change in employment condition.”

Smith said an example of this single-platform advantage is the control’s similarity across milling and turning operations. “All controls are customized to a certain extent,” Smith acknowledges. “But unlike Siemens, many other control series are individually customized so that the keyboard layout will be different from machine to machine. The Sinumerik 840D sl CNC is consistent. So when you train your operators, you can say, here’s the jog button, here’s the axes button, here’s your alarm button and your offset button. And this level of consistency extends to a graphical interface that really complements how we teach and learn.”

Teaching and learning are core values for an organization that uses visual techniques to promote education, efficient information sharing, and quality control. “We are a very visual company,” Smith said. “We use a lot of colors and we buy a lot of printer toner. Our parts inventory uses color-coded tags and the same is true across our production. We use yellows and blues and reds for consistent instruction. And the Siemens 840D sl control uses the same approach. You are guided visually for such things as axis direction, approach point, final depth and other variables inside a cycle. And this is true from control to control, for milling and turning.”

Smith said visually guided information flow is characteristic of today’s complex range of next-generation electronic communications, because this speeds understanding and information sharing. Whether for a smart phone or a CNC, graphically guided interfaces enable rapid learning and proficiency, a fact that has been well leveraged by the 840D control interface design.