Making Vertical Machining Centers Into Metal-eating Rock Stars

Is your vertical machining center spending more time idle than making chips? If the spindle isn't cutting while you're loading parts inside the machine tool, you’re missing out on serious productivity gains.

🔹 Reduce Downtime – Keep your spindle running while setting up the next job.
🔹 Improve Ergonomics – No more reaching into the machine every cycle.
🔹 Automate High-Mix, Low-Volume Work – Yes, it does make sense!

Check out this article in Shop Metalworking Technology on how Midaco Pallet Changers can transform your machining process.

By Kip Hanson

If you’re the proud owner of a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) or manage a milling department filled with pallet pool-equipped horizontal machining centers, feel free to skip ahead. The same is true for those with the foresight — and sufficient budget — to invest in vertical machining centers that left the factory with integrated pallet changers installed. This article doesn’t apply to you.

Midaco Automatic Pallet Changer with Kurt Workholding on VMC

Before you turn the page, however, congratulations are in order. Your shop enjoys much less downtime and far greater flexibility than does this story’s intended audience — the vast majority of machine shops that load their verticals as if they’re still operating a manual knee mill, making one part at a time.

“It doesn’t make chips.” That’s one of the more frequent criticisms aimed at Mike Munao when presenting his products to a prospective customer. The vice president of sales for MIDACO Corp., he’s used to comments like these, and counters them with an unfortunate truth. “When not equipped with some sort of pallet changing mechanism, vertical machining centers are the least productive machine tools in the shop.”

From Least to Most

Midaco Automatic Rotary 4-Pallet Changer

He’s right. Unfortunately, the same folks who place such emphasis on an investment’s ability to make chips give far less thought to the amount of time the doors stay open on their expensive CNC machinery — time they could greatly reduce with a pallet changer. “People also tell me all their work is high-mix, low-volume, so there’s no need for automation,” says Munao. “We’ve proven a lot of people wrong on both counts. The fact is, what better way to reduce changeover time than having two or four full-size machine tables that are set up and ready to go at a moment’s notice?”

This article isn’t a sales pitch for MIDACO or any of the others interviewed. It’s a fact of life. Whether you own a drill/tap machine, a gantry mill, or a three- or five-axis machining center, you’re shortchanging your overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) by not keeping the aforementioned doors closed as much as possible, the spindle happily whittling away at whatever workpieces sit clamped within.

Ergonomic Benefits

Machinist Loading Parts onto Midaco Manual Pallet Changer with Automatic Pallet Changer in Background

The argument for pallet changers isn’t limited to uptime. Tending a vertical mill is hard work. With every cycle, the operator must reach into the machine, loosen one or more vises, remove the parts and set them on the bench, blow off the chips, ensure all locating surfaces are clean, load new blanks, close the vises and then whack the handles with a mallet or, preferably, tighten each one with a torque wrench.

Wouldn’t all of this be easier and more repeatable outside the machine? And setting aside the operator’s aching back, what about the three to five minutes (or possibly more, for a fully loaded table) that the spindle sits idle every time the red light comes on? “These were the same problems that MIDACO faced when it first operated as a job shop more than five decades ago,” says Munao. “Like many shops, we became quite busy over time, but instead of buying another machine or starting a second shift, the owner’s son — Mike Cayley Jr. — designed our first pallet changer {the MPS-31 Micro Pallet Changer}.”

Munao or another company representative will be happy to provide more details, but suffice it to say that MIDACO now offers dozens of manual and automatic pallet changing units, among them pallet pools and “robot/cobot ready” systems for unattended operation, each ready for installation on a new or existing machine tool. “Once a customer sees the increased machine utilization and ergonomic benefits on their first pallet changer, that’s when they start asking what we can do for the other machines in the shop,” he notes.

Making Vertical Machining Centers Into Metal-eating Rock Stars