CHOOSING BETWEEN INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS & INNOVATIONS

By Jerry Senk, President of Equipment Manufacturers International, Inc.

ARTICLE TAKEAWAYS:

• Drive innovations with incremental improvements
• Keep the focus on what works

Innovation and improvement are two concepts that may differ in focus and goals. Improvements aims to identify inefficiencies and areas of the process inefficiencies in established systems and practices, leading to greater productivity and cost savings. Innovation can be a paradigm shift, out of the box approach or it can be an iterative process developed from improvements that centers on creating something entirely new, whether a product, service, or process

How best to gain the knowledge for the best improvements? Easy, turn to what matters most. Focus not on the newest design, but rather on what truly works in the field.

All improvements or innovations need to address a data-based deficiency or efficiency issue of the current process. As you attempt to climb to the design summit of a machine, you can’t reach the top of a tree without a strong foundation to set your ladder on.

INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS
First and foremost, don’t neglect the easy, no-brainer improvements. As we build specific foundry solutions, the realistic challenge to perfection is the time to market limitations to iterations. I am sure the first wheel rolled quite convincingly; however, this common device gets better and better every day. We went from a stone to steel reinforced wood, to an air-filled vulcanized tire, and now airless run flat or formed tire.

The foundry industry has such a deep history and legacy with the timetested unique reference point measured in millennium versus most other industries. Electric vehicles appear to be coming of age in the 21st century, however, I can recall taking a ride in my dad’s friend late 1800’s electric horseless carriage in the mid 1970’s.

We have learned over the years; the conservative foundry Industry is just that—conservative and as a result tend to be skeptical of new technologies, especially when they can’t see them operating successfully on the production floor.
As a top manager from GM’s CDC once told me, GM doesn’t want to be first, but prove it out and we will get in line. Truer words have not been spoken. In the foundry Industry, it seems no one wants to be first to implement technology, but they will line up around the corner to be second.

So, from a practical perspective for an equipment manufacturer, sometimes the best way to market is tackling the improvement pathway over the innovation. These smaller steps build on a base and allow the improvements to be more readily accepted and can also lead to the innovations of the future.

FOUNDRY INDUSTRY – RICH IN HISTORICAL MILESTONES

During over forty years in this industry, I have had the unique opportunity to sift through some of these yesteryear titans of foundry equipment archives. From Osborn’s Henry Ford moment of the ‘in-liner’ mold line, to the gigantic SPO (these guys left Osborn) who wanted not to lift the mold but use gravity and squeeze down.

I have read about Jolt versus Rap advantages and seen the calculations and test results. The transformation from pneumatic squeeze (Taccome bladder) to hydraulic squeeze and springs, the transformation to a pneumatic distribution of sand (BMD, Osborn 19MPLS machine, Sinto, and perfection by DISA). How many know of the ingenuity of Herman mold line motions and their tight flask match plate machines? Although impressive, these building blocks have led to current state of the art innovative tight flask technology of Savelli mold lines with Electro-Mechanical drives and Formi Press top and bottom squeeze.

HARRISON CASE STUDY

With Harrison, we had the important opportunity of reviewing the historical background, designs, the latest improvements from the Erie based company, as well as Herschel Hammer efforts to bring these machines up to date.

Anyone who knows and operates these economical dual station shell core machines understands that you really must be a solid mechanic and devoted to understanding the operation to maximize the efficiencies and productivity in a reliable manner.

Sometimes improvements to the base model are not enough, and the next iteration will require out of the box innovation. This is a tip of the hat to the reference from the old Beatrice commercials where they stated that “We didn’t make peanut butter, we just make peanut butter better.” I can appreciate this this tagline much better today when applied to our business. In fact, that was the impetus for us to previously tackle an updated design of a new CB-22 style machine, rather than rebuilding the same old machines from the beginning of the cold box process in the 80’s. To be sure, we are on what I hope is the last of 30-some improvements on this innovative machine.

With the Harrison machine we identified that the real challenge for the machine was related to change over, set up, and alignment of the machine. Being a dual machine, each side needs to be independent, yet allow for different sands and/ or blow configurations. This part of the machine design needed to be maintained. And we wanted to focus on 3 main points, not 30! I like to think of it as offering only a cheeseburger, fries and Pepsi, and not the Cheesecake Factory menu of choices.

One of the first opportunities for improvement is that each side of the machine transports via a cylinder actuated carriage the shell core box into a central fill station. Having a central, common sand blown position for fill is sensible, since the filling of the box takes mire seconds, but the cure process is typically measured in minutes.

The original design allowed for the mass of the core box to be lifted by a central table to be lifted up to blow. Typically, with a heavy box and an offset load that is cantilevered (clamp cylinder hangs off the one side), this did not always elevate in the most reliable and even manner. Not only did the blow plate and seal not secure evenly, but the lift and dropping of the cart and wheels could quickly dent the rail.

So, the easiest solution we found was to reverse this, and to bring the sand magazine down to the tool. To make this simple and easy—was the challenge. In order to do this, we eliminated the travel of the tooling to a center fill position, and then we brought the sand magazine out to the tool on each side. From there, we added a pair of cylinders (A Sutter/+GF+ design) and an air pneumatic hydraulic circuit to provide enough clamp force without excessive force.

With different tooling on each side, and different thickness of tooling, we need to design the flexibility into the system that tooling change over set up was not hit or miss, or an exercise in precision. We decided to simplify the set the centerline of the tooling on each side, regardless of thickness, to the same point. This way, you can change the tooling, slide the cart to a centerline, and let the sand magazine travel to each side always be the same distance.

The other design issue that was cumbersome was the actual rotation of the shell core box to remove the excessive sand and cure. The original Harrsion was not only limited mechanically by rotation, but it required a constant alignment of a rack and gear that was subject to several degrees of freedom and wear. This required constant attention from the maintenance department.

We were able to eliminate this whole interaction of rack and pinion engagement and improve the roll over ability by implementing a servo-controlled roll over. We were able to implement previous developed rollers and ring designs from a shell core machine retrofit, as well as our match plate machines, and give the machine the necessary arc travel to dump sand on from both sides of the core box centerline as we invert the arc evenly.

In the Harrison case study, there wasn’t just one single data-based deficiency in the older design, there were many. We were able to address not lifting the tooling and carriage up to blow, made an easier tooling set up with consistent alignment, and added a servo controlled rotary shell core motion for removing sand while eliminating the cumbersome rack and pinon rotary drive.