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PROVEN PRODUCT, NEW MANUFACTURING PROCESS

Companies often face a special conundrum: "Our product is good, but the way we manufacture it right now keeps us from meeting market challenges." That's where Power-Cast Vobra GmbH & Co. KG comes in: they provided support and won a new customer. 

What's the best way to control and facilitate crowd access to places with a particularly high level of public throughput, like soccer stadiums, airports, or in normal everyday life, as at DIY and garden centers? Among other things, Vobra's new partner specializes in solutions for just such areas and is an international leader in the area of turnstiles, electronic locks and barrier systems, in other words, systems that regulate admittance by either manual checks or, for example, ticket-based control. 

So far, the bearing bush for a manual exit and entrance system like those found in DIY stores was made by means of permanent mold casting. The ever-increasing demand naturally pleased the customer on the one hand, but also caused delivery problems: the manufacturing process used to date has advantages like unusually high dimensional accuracy and very high strength values, but the casting cycles are much longer than those used in die casting, making this process more interesting for smaller manufacturing volumes. Increasing order numbers called for a rethink.

Thanks to its high level of development expertise and decades of experience, Vobra was able to help convert the process to the die casting method - naturally without reducing quality. Although the component was slightly adapted in terms of design, it is still very similar to the previous article. For example, ribs had to be inserted on the outside to ensure strength in view of the fairly low wall thickness. Together with an external toolmaker, Vobra took over complete adaptation of the article - the customer was left only with the task of approving it. In addition, X-ray images taken after the first casting showed that the microstructure was fully equal to the one resulting from permanent mold casting, thus meeting the partner's quality requirements with 100% certainty.

What's more, the process changeover permits punctual delivery of the bearing bushes in the desired quantities and saves the customer 20% of costs and 30% of weight. In other words, a change in the manufacturing process can open up completely new avenues.

Titel: ©nd3000