Tag Archives: die casting

Ed Kocsis

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In a die casting era before we had lean gurus, Ed Kocsis lived lean die casting with every ounce of his engineering thought. Part of his legacy is the NADCA die material cleanliness standards for premium H13. This is just one tool that enables the 500,000 shot life he achieved on dies like torque converter stators where heat check is a issue. A really high bar when 100,000 shot life is declared good even now.

Molten Aluminum causes major tip and sleeve wear

Molten Aluminum causes major tip and sleeve wear


He bought shot tips at 4.5 inch OD and threw them out at 2.75 inches using them 20 times at .060 inches smaller in OD per renewal. The single design common shot sleeve for the plant (20 machines from 800T to 1200T) was the reverse it started at 2.75 inch ID and went out of service at 4.5 inch ID.
Prince Die Casting machine cartridge closing manifold

Prince Die Casting machine cartridge
closing manifold

He invented the cartridge valve manifold that became embedded within the Prince closing circuit, not for simplicity, but because it allowed the use of a 25% smaller electric motor and we stayed within available plant main transformer amps. Most of the dies he designed were loaded into the casting machine and were run continuously (even breaks were relieved) for a month. The 81% of theoretical yield (fastest that you can make a part divided into good parts sold) that was achieved during the 5 years I work with him (only shut down Christmas days) has not been approached at any other good casting house that I have been associated with since.

Rough Road Ahead

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"Dirt Road -Fremont-CA"by Benefactor 123

“Dirt Road -Fremont-CA”by Benefactor 123

We all cringe when we see a rough road sign in our path. The jagged accelerations chatter our teeth and shake us to the very bone. Immediately we want to get the road crews out there smooth the rough edges. A die casting machine reacts much the same way when abrupt changes of speed are commanded. We have all seen the “chatterbumps” in the shot traces as the control struggles to obey our commands.
I can remember making barbecue lids on a machine that effectively had a one speed shot. It was necessary to trigger the fast shot almost immediately to have any chance of accelerating to the 120 inches / second needed to fill the casting. I suspect that there are still some Lesters still working out there with a two speed shot.
Having experienced lots of “chatterbumps” it is refreshing to have the capabilities of a modern control. The Visi-Trak control
http://www.visi-trak.com/Media/Vann_Proof_withAd.pdf
running the rebuilt Prince at Cana-datum has up to 6 settable speeds and 6 settable accelerations. I was an old fashioned 3 speed shot proponent until I experienced a full speed launch of a transmission case. Applying targeted smoothing of the speed transitions made it possible to move the porosity out of the seal bores.

Acceleration control solved porosity issue

Acceleration control solved porosity issue

Having been trained to improve porosity issues by tuning gate and runner shape, I was excited to discover that tweaking of the fill profile actually was helpful and a whole lot easier and quicker to implement.

Shot profile for a transmission case

Shot profile for a transmission case

Since I published this post, my contacts at Visi-Track have given me this link because it is related.
Following is a link to where you can download the Ohio State University paper called “Experimental Determination of Slow Shot Velocity Position Profile to Minimize Air Entrapment”:

http://www.diecasting.org/wcm/Technology/Technical_Archive/wcm/Technology/Technical_Archive.aspx?hkey=62f825ba-424c-41c3-b10f-3b860771ffa4

Design for Service

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notINservice
We have all gotten excited by the 5S shine concept until we got out into the plant and tried to accomplish it at a reasonable cost. This is when it becomes evident if the manufacturing cell was set up with service in mind. In my career it has been necessary retrofit serviceability into a few plants that were not profitable because they had excessive down time. I would like to claim that I reinvented the equipment so that it never broke, but the technology to accomplish that approach is still way in the future. What I could do is speed up the process for repairing the equipment when it did break. This task would be easy if it only involved changing one item. The reality is that serviceablity is doing a whole bunch of little things right.
I have chosen to highlight a some examples that I recently implemented on a 3500 Ton Prince Die Cast cell at Cana-datum.

3500 ton Prince Sample Die Casting Cell

3500 ton Prince Sample
Die Casting Cell


1) Captivated bolts on guards – A surprising amount of machine repair time is lost simply looking for the bolts to reassemble after a repair. I discovered that washers welded to the bolts kept them from getting dropped and lost.
2) Hook on guards. I only use one bolt to attach my guards to the machine so that I conform to the safety standard for bolted guard. I turned around a plant loosing millions per year by changing guards
with 20 or so bolts into hook on guards with a single bolt.
3) Maximized crane drop in access by routing utilities in banks.
4) No utilities below floor level
5) Platform without leg bracing bolted at deck level instead of concrete floor anchored
6) Modularized platforms, auxiliary equipment – The items surrounding the main equipment can be quickly removed because they are in manageable chunks that can be moved with a lift truck.
7) Sweepable floor. Everything is off of the floor or contained with closed bases so that floor dry can be quickly removed when the spills occur.
8) All electrical junction box covers accessible without disassembly

Mimicry

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By Charles R Knight

By Charles R Knight


We are all being asked to innovate to insure the long term viability of our firms. Nature serves as a good model because evolution serves to highlight the best strategies. Modern behemoths like the 3500 Prince Die Casting machine at Cana-datum are a good example. Innovation, useful in the current marketplace, involves adding computer brain power to improve control and results. In the same fashion that the brontosaurus used multiple brains to achieve timely control, die casting machines work best when more than one computer is employed. In the same fashion that involuntary nerve reactions protect us from injury, some of the innovative new computer uses are simply mundane monitors. Higher level computer brain power can be dedicated to running the shot in much the same fashion as the brontosaurus had a whole brain dedicated to operating the rear legs. Computers embedded in devices like soft starter are particularly useful is reducing the peak electrical demand so that enough power is available to implement precision temperature control using hot oil systems without rewiring the plant.

Future Shock

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Cashflow for Manufacturing cell with Illya Dobrych Lightning background

Cashflow for Manufacturing cell with Illya Dobrych Lightning background


Will Rogers once quipped that it is easy to make money on the stock market. His observation also can be applied to investing in manufacturing. You buy equipment and you make a profit when the manufactured product sells. Some asked “What do you do if the product doesn’t sell?” — Future Shock Applies — Will Rogers responded “That is easy too – you don’t buy the equipment” My lead picture displays a typical manufacturing investment cash flow. In automotive especially because “production process” parts for testing are wanted well ahead of volume manufacturing, investment in equipment can be required two years ahead. In the current chaos, it is easy for the demand for a specific part to evaporate before the volume production starts.
Anyone who rolls the dice by investing in manufacturing is well aware of future shock. The real question is what do you do to reduce the risk? Designers on my projects, who succeed in mitigating future shock risk receive a plaque with a shoe horn. A shoe horn is an uncommonly used engineering design tool.
GM integrated Axel I-6 oil pan

GM integrated Axel I-6 oil pan

The patent and best in industry awards for a GM engine component are just gingerbread when they are compared with the creative design that enable us to delay the build of the plant and purchase of the equipment for a couple years until volume production started. One of my shoe horn plaques is in the lobby of the tool and die shop who managed to squeeze the design of the tooling into existing production equipment enabling the creating of early production samples
As we all recover from the recession against a background of chaos, it will become necessary to mitigate this type of future shock in most new manufacturing launches. I have spent the last year of my life installing a $5,000,000 manufacturing cell at a tool and die shop.Shazaam1
Our first user solved their timing and interest cost issues manufacturing their “production process” test parts at the tool and die shop. This saved them one years interest cost on their own production cell which will not be in place till this fall. The extra lean cost benefits of faster launch timing, early process development and tooling correction shipping are just extra icing on the cake.