The use of standard or stock sizes is a first principle of cost reduction. An engineer who specifies an AISI 1020 bar of hot-rolled steel 53 mm square has added cost to the product, provided that a bar 50 or 60 mm square, both of which are preferred sizes, would do equally well. The 53-mm size can be obtained by special order or by rolling or machining a 60-mm square, but these approaches add cost to the product. To ensure that standard or preferred sizes are specified, designers must have access to stock lists of the materials they employ. A further word of caution regarding the selection of preferred sizes is necessary. Although a great many sizes are usually listed in catalogs, they are not all readily available. Some sizes are used so infrequently that they are not stocked. A rush order for such sizes may add to the expense and delay. Thus you should also have access to a list such as those in Table A–17 for preferred inch and millimeter sizes. There are many purchased parts, such as motors, pumps, bearings, and fasteners, that are specified by designers. In the case of these, too, you should make a special effort to specify parts that are readily available. Parts that are made and sold in large quantities usually cost somewhat less than the odd sizes. The cost of rolling bearings, for example, depends more on the quantity of production by the bearing manufacturer than on the size of the bearing. Large Tolerances Among the effects of design specifications on costs, tolerances are perhaps most significant. Tolerances, manufacturing processes, and surface finish are interrelated and influence the reducibility of the end product in many ways. Close tolerances may necessitate additional steps in processing and inspection or even render a part completely impractical to produce economically. Tolerances cover dimensional variation and surface-roughness range and also the variation in mechanical properties resulting from heat treatment and other processing operations. Since parts having large tolerances can often be produced by machines with higher production rates, costs will be significantly smaller. Also, fewer such parts will be rejected in the inspection process, and they are usually easier to assemble. A plot of cost versus tolerance/machining process is shown in Fig. 1–2, and illustrates the drastic increase in manufacturing cost as tolerance diminishes with finer machining processing. Breakeven Points Sometimes it happens that, when two or more design approaches are compared for cost, the choice between the two depends on a set of conditions such as the quantity of production, the speed of the assembly lines, or some other condition. There then occurs a point corresponding to equal cost, which is called the breakeven point. Cost Estimates There are many ways of obtaining relative cost figures so that two or more designs can be roughly compared. A certain amount of judgment may be required in some instances. For example, we can compare the relative value of two automobiles by comparing the dollar cost per pound of weight. Another way to compare the cost of one design with another is simply to count the number of parts. The design having the smaller number of parts is likely to cost less. Many other cost estimators can be used, depending upon the application, such as area, volume, horsepower, torque, capacity, speed, and various performance ratios.
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