Automotive
Our customer brought Ames a "problem" mold that they were unable to process consistently due to inherent product design problems. The Automotive component required a long and thin piece of bypass steel (blade) to produce a latch. The steel was fatiguing and breaking with great frequency.
Further complicating the problem was the fact that the mold was a 16 cavity. The blade was very small (.015” wide) and when a blade would break, the customers injection molding equipment was not sensitive enough to recognize that the tooling had indeed been compromised.
The Ames team resolved the problem resulting in a more robust process and reduced the time between blade breakage by 1050%. The changes that were made included:
- Automation to control both the parts and runners.
- Changes to the process to recognize slight variations in process (identify blade breakage).
- Vision to assure automation is operating properly.
