Automatic Countersinking Process

Overview

Bon Tool, a leading manufacturer of hand tools for the building trades, was founded by Carl Bongiovanni in 1958. The company has been committed to engineering products with priorities of Innovation, Value, and Service. Today, currently owned by third-generation John Bongiovanni, Bon Tool now offers more than 6,000 contractor-grade tools, light equipment, and materials. Bon Tool Company was looking for a solution to increase the efficiency of the countersinking process in the production of their concrete hand trowels. Currently, operators countersink each blade hole individually, which takes an average of about 30 seconds per hole, including setup and processing. The current line of trowels has $60,000 in overhead and labor costs with a predicted output of about 10,000 trowels per year. The countersinking process is the bottleneck of production, so Bon Tool would like to increase the efficiency of this process.

Objectives

-Identify, develop, assess, and document multiple methods and technologies to carry out the countersinking process more efficiently.

-Determine the benefit of new methods compared to the current process.

-Provide Bon Tool direction relating to the cost analysis of explored solution methods.

Approach

The project comprised four major tasks:
-identify and evaluate countersinking processes that are faster than the current process

-machine a blade using HAAS CNC Machine Center

-conduct a cost-benefit analysis on all viable countersinking processes

-create and present the final report

While most of the originally planned tasks were completed, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the team from completing the physical machine testing task.

Outcomes

After detailed research, two options were considerably more viable than the others: the CNC mill and the CNC turret punch press.
The final recommendation was the CNC turret punch press due to its cost and time savings.