Improving Quality and Reducing Costs In Seal Manufacturing

Improving Quality and Reducing Costs In Seal Manufacturing

A major U.S manufacturer of steel-cased, multi-element seals contacted Aries Engineering/HyperCyl® for help in reducing excessive warranty costs of their finished product. The OEM was experiencing in excess of $10 million per year in warranty claims due to their current hydraulic presses’ inability to monitor the number of elements within a given assembly. They needed a press and monitoring system that could accurately measure the number and thickness of seal components within a sub-assembly prior to being finalized.

Aries Engineering supplied the solution with our HyperCyl IntelliCyl® cylinders with integral LVDT and Load Cell options, combined with the HyperView- Press®, our Signature Analysis Monitor, which provided measurement of the Part Stack-Up height prior to finalizing the seal. This ultimately reduced in-process part non-conformance to near-zero. The HyperCyl monitoring systems were able to accurately measure the inclusion or absence of a 0.002” thickness seal element by establishing a series of “windows” around critical points of the operation, namely the part stack-up. ONLY when this critical “window” set point was confirmed would high pressure then activate and finalize the process. Aries Engineering/HyperCyl® was able to accommodate this customer’s needs and reduce overall warranty claims to less than $60,000 annually, a savings well over $9 million per year!

We can also help you improve the quality of your product, while reducing your costs and allowing your business to become more competitive. We offer Hydra-Pneumatic and Servo solutions, applications engineering, testing, tech-support and the best warranty in the industry!

Find out more about how we can meet your application needs, email [email protected].

**1. An infeed conveyor provides the subassembly to the gripper location. 2. From there, the gripper will load the seal into the nest cavity. 3. The HyperCyl cylinder with IntelliCyl force/distance feedback assembles the filaments and forms the final shape. 4. From there, only when the part is validated and passes a series of inspections it is automatically able to be removed from the cell into a container. 5. Any parts that do NOT pass inspection are automatically redirected into a bad parts bin for scrap. 6. Isolating these good and bad parts is crucial for the prevention of part-non-conformance.