Solutions Portfolio - Cost Savings in Water Industry

Customer Request

Identify and recommend cost savings opportunities for existing plastic washer with high volume usage.

Challenges

Existing product means that tooling also already exists. Therefore, any cost savings idea involving tooling would have to save enough to justify the expense of building a new tool or modifying the existing tool.

Cost analyses showed the largest opportunity for cost savings was to decrease the machine cycle time and/or increase cavitation. Meanwhile the pre-existing tool design required a manual de-gating process which was so time-consuming it prevented reduced cycle time, and an increase in cavitation with the manual de-gating process would only make matters worse.
At the same time, quality requirements prevented the use of a hot manifold or three-plate mold design, and the part was too thin for a traditional sub-gate. Therefore, all traditional approaches to automatic de-gating were prohibited. Specifically, while traditional sub-gates require a part thickness of at least .090 inches allowing for at least .060 of steel above the gate, the entire thickness of this part was only .040.

Solutions

Guttenberg Industries engineering team worked closely with one of our most trusted tooling sources to custom design a tool that would allow us to sub-gate into the side of this part that is only .040 thick. To our knowledge, this is the only such part on the market today.

Outcome

By introducing our unique sub-gate design we were able to double the cavitation while simultaneously reducing the cycle time by 45%. The net improvement was a 55% price reduction for the customer who enjoyed a 3-month payback on their tooling investment.