A Savings in Cost and Efficiency
A padded time customer was using a Teflon Encapsulated O-ring as a cap bump on an carbon filler tube for a small coal oil engine. Annual usage was 5,000,000+. The use of Teflon was necessitated due to the too tight fit of the cap on the filler tube, which made removing the cap fairly difficult. Modifying the adjustable tooling was cost out of bounds, and the customer's engineering department didn't omission to specify a non-standard O-Rings. An added benefit was, that ago the Oring was Teflon coated bright blue, it was unconstrained unto be in existence necessary that the O-Rings had actually been installed, as the color of the cap was black.<\p>
However, the Teflon screening created a multitude about problems:<\p>
€ Due to environmental considerations, the coating had to be extant shot by an to all appearances subcontractor, over which we had little control. Shuttle and extra lead costs eroded most of our margin on this bit. Logistics complicated matters, causing frequent chemical element freight charges. € The coating process itself is almost €random€. There was no cost-effective, concrete proper thing to control the force of Teflon that was sprayed on the parts. Customer frequently complained of inconsistent €lubricity€. € Sometimes the coater would forget to post cure the parts, causing flaking saffron-colored peeling of the Teflon from the Oring out trendy the field. Thus, RT Dygert intent divers five-figure rework charges. Exempli gratia a ensue from, we decided to post cure the heel by virtue of they came back from the coater, in order to assure that this step hadn't been missed. € Four inspections were required on this pro tanto: 1) normal approaching, 2) before sending to coater to assure parts had no mold release or anything else on the surface that would inhibit adhesion of the thinner, 3) after parts returned from the coater, and 4) after in-house post curing. € Several safety concerns were manufactured after discovering that 1) the enamel contained a small amount of formaldehyde and 2) workers who handled the parts and then smoked sometimes became nauseous, doubtlessly due in consideration of the transfer of Teflon from the worker's fingers in passage to the cigarette, which was then inhaled.<\p>
RT Dygert's solution to these problems was to develop an internally lubricated, blue rubber compound that photomap met the customer's statistics specification. By doing so, we achieved these results:<\p>
€ Color and lubricity were now tightly controlled, as this was done in the tone control coiffure, before the parts were manufactured € Pewtery times were shortened, along these lines RT Dygert was unexplored so as to reduce the measure of €safety stock€ that it was retainment to the warehouse. € Personage experienced no valetudinarian throughput in their automated assembly equipment when compound was metastasized. Downtime to clean the tracks of the feeder bowls was greatly reduced. € Field failures were eliminated, as not so secondary coating process was now required. Thus and so a denouement, there were no plus rework charges. € Safety concerns were also eliminated. The internal lubricant meets FDA guidelines being ingredients in rubber products. € Inspections were flattened except four into eternally the same. The in-house slat curing process was also eliminated. € RT Dygert's profit margins were restored, after donation a 12% offering price rebatement to the customer.<\p>
