A customer came to Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» to solve a problem with one of their products. Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» identified the source of the issue, engineered a solution and delivered results that saved the customer valuable time and money.
168 Production
Hours Saved
13% Reduction
in Cycle Time
Problem //
A leader in industrial closures and packaging components, and long-time customer of Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» with services that include injection molding and CNC machining, was having assembly issues in the field due to a particular part feature warping, which limited its cap functionality.
This faulty feature was caused from the long cycles necessary to cool part during the injection molding process. HDPE has high shrink rate percentage which will cause circular features like this to creep inward; in this application causing the cap/threads to be rendered useless. Material and part geometry required longer cycle times (for cooling) in attempts to mitigate this features issue.
Solution //
Adding Additive Manufacturing (DMLS) to the Process
The experts at Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» identified the problem as a cooling issue. However due to the deep draw, it was difficult to get proper cooling into the cavity. Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» tooling engineers took a different approach, designing conformal cooling into a new core insert. With Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» printed the insert in tooling steel to near net shape (fig. A, right) and post processed using CNC (fig. B) to hit the required tolerance requirements.
Cooling channels (fig. C) were incorporated into the design in areas previously unattainable via traditional tooling practices, maximizing the amount of water flowing to these problem areas and forcing cooling at the exact spot required to remove residual heat, allowing the part to cool quickly and evenly.
Results //
More Control, Faster Response, Scalable Growth
The customer was able to reduce cycle time by 13%, resulting in 168 production hours in savings on a 100,000 piece run. This led to:
Reduced
-
wear and tear on the machinery
-
operational cost
-
warpage, resulting in increased product quality
Increased
-
dimensional accuracy
-
compound effect of cycle time savings resulting in machine availability
Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»â€™s ability to identify the problem, design solutions, provide simulation analysis, produce DMLS core, and run production all under one roof provides highly unique advantage for any customer looking to push manufacturing.
Talk to an Expert
Working with Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» means easy access to Additive and Advanced manufacturing experts. Contact us today, and let’s transform the future of manufacturing together!
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