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Maxime Gaudiau avatar image
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Maxime Gaudiau asked Braydn T commented

How to manage CNC Tools linked to specific products ?

Hello everyone !

I'm fairly new to Flexsim and i'm blocked on a problem that i believe is a bit complex.


I'm currently working on a Flexsim model of a Production Unit that is composed of 3 CNC Milling Machines linked by an automatic workpiece fixture changer.
This production unit will manufacture up to 80 references, and each of those references need both standard and specific cutting tools to be mounted in the CNC Magazine in order to begin the operation.

How can i model the fact that the operator needs to manually change a certain number of tools in the CNC internal storage, based on the product reference that will be produced ?

In other words, how can i manage a catalog of tools and how can i prevent the production to begin if not all the tools required are present in the machine internal magazine ?
Also, if there is no free slots for the required tools, the operator needs to take out "useless" tools for the planned operation in order to insert the required ones.

Example :

Product A : Tools 1, 2, 3

Product B : Tools 3, 4 ,5

Product C Tools 1,4,7

To produce Product A, the operator need to manually insert Tools 1,2 and 3 in the CNC internal storage, and, if there is no spare room in this magazine, take out some tools to put the required ones.

Sorry for the approximate english.

Thank you very much for any help you can give me. Even a small advice is greatly appreciated.


FlexSim 19.1.2
toolscncmagazine
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Braydn T avatar image
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Braydn T answered Braydn T commented

@Maxime Gaudiau

I think your best option would be to create a global table with the Product type and the tools needed in columns. When a part arrives to be machined, you can look up that part in the table to see what tools it will need.

At this point there are a couple of ways to proceed. I think I would use lists to represent the CNC machines tools and the available tools, and move the items from an "available" list to the CNC machines list, and if the list length is over your limit, then the operator has to remove tools first.

I think this all depends on what output you are trying to get out of your model. If you are modeling a larger process and this is just a part of it, I would represent this with delays on some sort of distribution that represents your data. If you are modeling tool usage or something similar, then this would be the way to go I think.

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Maxime Gaudiau avatar image Maxime Gaudiau commented ·

Hello Braydn T and thank you very much for your reply.

I think i get what you mean. Just to make sure i got it, on the Global table :
One Line = One product reference
For each product reference : create a column for each tool associated with this product reference.
(Please check the attached picture and tell me if i got it right on the principle.)

Also, how do i set an operation time for each change ?
Meaning that for each exchange of data (From outside to inside or inside to outside the machine lists) i need the operator to spend a given time, about 30s, and to be near the machine. How can i do that ?

About my objective :
By modeling this production unit, i need to check if i can get a certain number of finished part in a specified amount of time, while keeping the operator "Busy" state under 80% or so.
Tool changes can represent a lot of time :Some parts requires 15 tools to change, and if the magazine is full, it represents 30 operations, so around 15m. Given that the operator has also several tasks to do during masked time, and is a bottleneck in the process, i need to be relatively precise about these timings to quantify the excess of charge.

In my opinion, setting a general / average / or random delays on tool changes operations can distort my results.

Thank you for any advice, and if anyone has information or has another idea, don't hesitate to post.

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table.png (41.6 KiB)
Braydn T avatar image Braydn T Maxime Gaudiau commented ·

@Maxime Gaudiau

If you are doing this in Process Flow, you can just use a delay. If you are particular about the time (for example if one tool change takes more than the other) you can have that length of time in the table for that part as well, and use that quantity for the delay task.

The tables look right. I am excited to see how this model goes, it could be fairly complicated but should turn out very cool. Let me know if you have any further questions about it.

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