Listen. Do you hear it?

Probably not.

If anything causes a spike in the blood pressure of manufacturing managers, supervisors, and company owners, it’s no sound at all. Silence. Silence in a CNC machining center means nothing is happening. When those high-speed spindles aren’t turning, it’s costing you money.

Whether it’s a bearing failure, balance and vibration issues, overheating, problems with the clamping system, or another issue, downtime due to spindle failure is expensive. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are options, the most obvious of which is partnering with a reliable spindle repair service. The good ones offer much more than just repair, including services that keep your CNC spindles healthy and in good working order.  

According to a 2023 study by Siemens, machine downtime cost Fortune Global 500 companies $1.5 trillion in 2022. Just a single hour’s downtime in an automotive plant cost over $2 million. That same hour cost $1.3 million in 2019–20. Across all industries, downtime costs were up 50% from the period from 2019 to 2020. While your company may not rank in the Fortune Global 500, the cost of downtime is expensive, and you need to avoid it. By knowing the true value of downtime, you can determine the value of partnering your company with a spindle repair service.

How much does CNC spindle downtime cost? The most obvious costs are the ones you think of when that spindle stops. These are the tangible costs of spindle failure.

Let’s say you’re paying that operator $30 an hour to operate a high-speed spindle, and they have an assistant who makes $20 an hour.  When that high-speed spindle fails, that’s $50 an hour that’s not producing anything. You may be able to make one person an assistant on another CNC operation in your shop and have the other take inventory or clean that dark corner of the factory floor, but chances are they aren’t doing a job worth $50 an hour.

Most owners and supervisors have done the homework and determined how much a CNC spindle makes per hour. As an example, say you’ve determined that a designated spindle on your CNC floor has a production value of $1,200 an hour. You can add that to how much you’re losing as soon as it goes down.

These are just example values, by the way. Yours may be quite higher. A CNC spindle with automatic tool change capabilities has a higher production value, and often the operator does, too.

Don’t let your bottom line suffer from spindle downtime. Call GMN USA to start taking preventative measures today.

There are other costs to your CNC spindle going down.

Will you have to pay expedited shipping costs to get those products to the customer on time?

Now you have a bottleneck of raw or prepared materials waiting to be machined. Do they have a usable period before they can’t be machined properly? Are they at risk of being damaged by other factory operations? Is the upstream process that got those materials there now at risk of a shutdown, too? What about downstream processes? You can probably add more labor costs.

What’s the cost of overtime you’ll need to pay to get production back on track? Overtime also means overworked, tired employees. Reject rates are higher, to say nothing of the enhanced risk of workplace accidents and injuries.

There’s also the cost of industrial spindle repair, providing you have a relationship with a reputable spindle repair service.

What are the indirect costs? These less tangible costs are difficult to quantify, but they could cost you more.

Despite its flaws, some companies still rely on just-in-time manufacturing. If you can’t fill an order because a CNC spindle went down, your client’s operation is affected. It’s a mark on your reputation, and word gets around.

Remember that bottleneck we spoke of? If that bottleneck gets too big, it can affect parts of your operation you didn’t think possible. Shipping is now idle, or at least impacted. Remember the employees and machinery upstream and downstream. That failed spindle can also affect those labor costs, and there can also be more idle machinery. 

This is linked to the reputation damage we spoke of earlier. Your selling point may be your ability to manufacture product in a timely fashion. If you lose that ability, it affects how customers think of your brand.

Maybe you’re astute enough to have two production lines. That’s a good thing. But now you have to stress the second line in order to maintain production. This stresses employees, too. 

If the parts you manufacture are part of another product, then another company can be affected by your spindle breakdown. In the case of medical device manufacturers, this can often mean life and death, as it did during the recent pandemic. 

Now that you have a better handle on the direct costs of spindle downtime, you can look at a formula to help determine the cost of downtime:

Cost of downtime= (Hourly wages lost + Hourly production value) x Duration of downtime.

Or to look at it in terms of numbers we discussed earlier:

Cost of downtime= ($50 in hourly wages + $1200 in hourly production value) x three days (24 hours) to get the spindle running.

That’s $30,000, and it doesn’t count the indirect costs of damage to your reputation and the other factors we discussed, including the employees and processes upstream and downstream that are affected. 

And that’s only for one breakdown. If you have multiple CNC spindles, then there’s the potential for multiple breakdowns, and now we have a better handle on the price tag for each one. The Siemens Study revealed that the average manufacturing facility suffers 20 downtime incidents a month.  

Remember the indirect costs of downtime? If you factor in these less tangible costs, the formula looks like:

Cost of downtime= (Hourly wages lost + Hourly production value) x Duration of downtime +damage to your reputation +loss of recurring revenue + loss of future revenue.

A reliable spindle repair service that offers preventative services offers a respite from these costs. 

What you can do is take steps towards avoiding that downtime. Working with a reliable and knowledgeable spindle repair service is a step in the right direction. They can help you avoid two of the major causes of CNC spindle failure: poor maintenance and worn CNC spindles.

In addition to expert spindle repair service, GMN USA offers the following programs to help you diagnose potential problems with your CNC spindles before they happen, and to have a back-up spindle safely stored and ready to use.

GMN USA offers a unique monitoring solution called IDEA 4S. IDEA 4S (integrated data evaluation and acquisition for spindles) uses sensors installed on your spindle and easy-to-navigate software to gather information about your spindle as it operates. You get data on usage history and tracking on projects. By monitoring the data, you move into a predictive maintenance mode, intercepting problems before they start. You can also better track future maintenance needs.

IDEA 4S links to your internal network and IIOT systems. It provides you a record of operation to send to GMN USA for your spindle repair service. Armed with this information, a skilled repair expert can spot early signs of bearing problems, vibration issues, and potential overheating. Best of all, IDEA 4S technology works on all spindles, regardless of brand or manufacturer.

See what the data can do for you. Find out how GMN USA’s IDEA 4S Spindle Monitoring System can take your operations to the next level.

It doesn’t take too many CNC spindle failures for you to justify the cost of a back-up spindle. Experience tells us, though, that the manufacturing environment is not the best place to store those extra spindles. Your factory can have drastic swings in temperature and humidity, rodents that love to chew wiring, and poor record-keeping.

The Spindle Hotel at GMN USA is an environmentally controlled storage facility. We take care of your back-up spindle, rotate the shaft regularly to prevent bearing damage, and ship it out quickly when you need it. Even better, any warranty you have from GMN USA on spindle repair service is not active until the spindle ships out to you. Consider it an extension on your warranty at no charge.

Your best option is to partner with a reliable spindle repair service. The Siemens Study determined that condition monitoring and predictive maintenance can increase productivity by 6% and reduce maintenance costs by 40%. GMN USA has more than 100 years of collective spindle experience on staff, and we service companies all over North America with our spindle repair services, IDEA 4S spindle monitoring, spindle maintenance, and our spindle hotel program.

For CNC centers that have difficulty finding parts for their specialized spindles, GMN USA can machine custom parts to high tolerances, as close as 0.001mm. Regardless of make and model, we can fabricate a replacement part for your spindle that meets all OEM specifications.

GMN USA is ready to meet your spindle repair and maintenance needs. Contact us today to get started.