Quote:
Originally Posted by NoHaveMSG
I run into stupid issues like that with our low pressure injection molding machines. You change something like a pump motor and it’s spinning 10-20rpm off and the shot weight goes off a gram or two and it creates all sorts of problems.
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Agreed, and the worst part is when it's the same motor - rating, part number, manufacturer - and the tuning forces it to be recalibrated to work with the specific density of the material. I swear people were calling me crazy when I had 1 single Amplifier mess my whole dispense system (granted it was for conformal coating for OEM PCB's) that I had to retune, reteach, and setup the dispense pattern for 1 product. My operators hated the downtime for the equipment, but it ran smooth as a champ for 3 months of non-stop production till the product went End of Life and the equipment was scrapped. No one in my plant wanted to touch that machine with a 10 ft pole, and even after it was scrapped no one wanted anything to do with that equipment.
The maintenance intervals, typical wear times, and especially changeovers always make equipment run with variation. It's very hard to get it done right the first time, so all depends on is continuous improvement to get it down to as close of a σ that you can with your dispense weights. Rest assured, I know how much suffering being at Tier 1 or 2 specs that makes the pain for manufacturing understandable. But it's because of the common issues we see at plants that I know other manufacturers like Subaru will ensure quality to prevent future recalls/problems.