Solutions Portfolio – Cost Savings in Water Industry

Customer Request:

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

Challenges:

1. 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.


2. 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.
    
3. 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.