Cutting fluids
Productivity after dark How lights out manufacturing improves with Oemeta’s high-performance lubricants.
“Lights-out” or “dark factory” machining is the next step for greater productivity and profitability in UK manufacturing. With the growing reliability and cost-effectiveness of both robot loading and monitoring systems, coupled with a limited labour market, more companies are looking at their own potential to carry out lights- out machining. In order to make lights-out a success, it is critical that all the machinery, tooling, peripherals, and programming are optimised and able to work flawlessly together, along with additional considerations in place for when machining is left to run unsupervised. As a leading supplier of coolants and cutting fluids, and with a customer base already
capitalising on unsupervised machining, Oemeta UK shares some insights on how these demands impact coolant selection: Lights-out machining does differ from everyday machining and there are specific things to take into consideration when selecting the right cutting fluid. Managing Director at Oemeta UK, David Woodford, makes the point that “it’s not how quickly you can make a part, it’s what level of throughput you can maintain. Clearly, tooling lifetime and tolerance maintenance are key to any limitations, and it’s here where very high lubrication performance can make a game- changing difference”. “Add to this the fact that lights out machining is often carried out on longer-running and
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