Sounds like shock has become a factor, in which regular carbon tool steels often fail. Have you tried a higher alloy (tough) tool steel like... X38CrMoV5-1 (1.2343) and X40CrMoV5-1 (1.2344) they are hot-work tool
steels for universal use. Should be about the same price, and hardened using the...
I'm quite poor at this stuff, but you are putting a lot of effort into this, so... Have you tried capturing the number of items that catia has prompted the user to input into the pattern using OLE or the knowledge tool bench? Then you should be able to bypass trying to read the copies created...
Bill has some perfect ideas! I might add the thought of point of use tooling and processes, changing the batch of in-coming parts to FIFO ques, and consider the scrap created if there is an engineering change, or a defect shows up. Batching is bad for quality! Part of the problem might be wrong...
A value stream map is a type of material information flow chart. Some experts think that because it is mapped that a push system (like MRP) is lean. This is mostly not true. A kanban system uses a visual cue like a card or signal to a downstream customer to order the next piece (pull system)...
