Automation - the Key to Achieving Speed-to-Market Capability
Authored by Annette Smith, Senior Marketing Communications Specialist, Carl Zeiss IMT Corporation,
Industrial Measuring Technology

Today's rapidly changing market conditions and ever-increasing global competition force manufacturers to continuously optimize processes and improve customer satisfaction. Time-pressed customers are demanding faster service without having to sacrifice product quality. "Today, it's all about just-in-time manufacturing and speed-to-market capability," says Arvin Kumbakonam, Mold Design Engineer, at Intralox. "That is why we believe highly in automation. It is a vital component of our strategy."

Intralox is a large manufacturer of modular plastic belting products for the food processing, beverage container and material handling industries. At its 335,000 sq ft facility in New Orleans, LA, the company manufactures over 400 different types of belts. In 1971, Intralox engineers invented modular plastic conveyor belting and since the company has remained one of the world's largest exclusive manufacturers of this technology. Over 1,000 employees serve the worldwide customer base. The company's philosophy of always providing customers with superior service, highest product quality and on-time delivery has helped them become the leader in their field.

Intralox produces thousands of graphite electrodes per year that are used to make the molds for the various types of belts. "Before we purchased the CONTURA coordinate measuring machine (CMM) from Carl Zeiss, we were using general hand tool measuring devices like basic optical comparators and dial indicators to inspect the molds," says Kumbakonam. "As mold cavities became more complex and difficult to inspect, the whole process became too time consuming. We were not able to measure geometries on certain molds and electrodes. In addition, we knew that we had to automate our processes to maintain the flow, so we made the decision to buy a CMM." This would allow them to check the geometry of the parts more quickly and speed up the process. He continues: "Those were our basic requirements at that time. Once we started using it however, we discovered additional benefits that would help us optimize our processes even further."

Before making the investment, Dave McClendon, Mold Maker at Intralox, wanted to be certain to select the CMM that would offer them the most benefits. "We selected some of the key parts and sent them to several CMM suppliers for testing," he says. A few weeks later, McClendon and Kumbakonam attended demonstrations to see first hand the capabilities of the various CMMs. "Arvin and I were quite impressed with the results that we saw during the demo at Carl Zeiss, particularly the ease with which the CONTURA was able to check some of the features that we needed to inspect. What really impressed us were the contour scanning capabilities of the VAST XT sensor. With this, we would be able to accurately measure geometries and achieve repeatability among measurements. None of the other machines offered that." They would also be able to share information back and forth between PRO/E and SolidWorks and gain valuable CAD exchange capabilities.

Unexpected Benefits
"We also wire-EMD real deep and small diameter holes," says McClendon. With the capability of the CMM, they now can go deep inside and check concentricity, roundness and straightness of the holes. He continues: "We did not have that capability before and it is vital to this procedure because of the molding process. We put a core rod inside each mold cavity that creates geometry on the final product. This requires us to hold very tight tolerances of about  .0002 inches. With the ability to perform in-process inspection of the molds and keep records of all the data, maintenance of the molds can now be scheduled at regular intervals or replacement parts can be built on-time which results in less downtime.

Another benefit they discovered is the ability to reverse engineer some of the plastic parts that are produced in the molds. Plastic parts sometimes have processing inconsistencies that have to be overcome by reverse engineering. Engineers are now able to inspect the piece and remake cavities to ensure that they meet set specifications. "That helps us in a great way," says Nick Judice, Mold Design Engineer at Intralox. "When you realize that you have a non-value added process slowing down your manufacturing process that is when it's critical to automate the process."

The CALYPSO CAD-based software has provided Intralox with several benefits, in particular the CALYPSO parametric programming capabilities (PCM). Using the CALYPSO DLL interface, they write Visual Basic programs that help store and retrieve information from the database. Another important benefit of the software is the ability to set-up multiple user levels. Once the programs are created, operators just have to hit the start button to begin the inspection process, which makes it really easy and ensures the needed security and reliability.

Incorporating Lean into Day-to-Day Activities
The use of CMMs has increased throughput of high precision measurements, thus decreasing time spent on QC/QA. At Intralox, employees incorporate lean into their day-to-day activities. In an effort to decrease wasted efforts, they rely heavily on automation. Through this process, they have automated the CMM and its programs with a mix of in-house custom applications and PCM to yield more robust measurement data and reduced downtimes. "The CMM offered us a lot more than we expected. A lot of our measuring has grown," says McClendon. "For example, we have many parts that are built by outside vendors. We never really took the time to measure the incoming parts. We now have the capability to inspect incoming parts that allows us to verify the specs and make sure that our vendors hold the same tolerances that we do."

A Manufacturing Improvement Device
"Having the CMM totally changed the way we think about manufacturing," says Kumbakonam. "It is not only a quality control device for us, but it is a manufacturing improvement device. It gave us information about what is going wrong in our manufacturing process and we were able to eliminate inconsistencies." McClendon adds: "The cutting tools we used in the past used to wear, because graphite is milled at very high speeds. We were able to specify better cutting tools and make better decisions on which tools to buy so that allowed us to maintain the required accuracy on our graphite parts." Using the customized template-based programming; our CMM is able to check the geometry of the electrodes in a matter of minutes," McClendon adds. "It's the immediate results that count."

The CONTURA allowed them to enhance product quality and reliability. They are able to accurately measure data during production cycles prior to final assembly, allowing less custom manufacturing and more reliable tooling. The tolerances range from  .005 to  .0002. While previous measurement techniques were able to reach these tolerances, they paid a heavy price in measurement time. With the advanced features in CALYPSO, they were also able to improve the form grinding process. This is a very difficult procedure considering the intricate part geometry of the steel, particularly if an accuracy of  0.0002" has to be maintained. But they were able to achieve this by using CALYPSO. "We place a form on a grinding wheel, take a piece of graphite, grind it and measure it. Once that  0.0002" limit has been achieved, we begin form grinding the steel," says McClendon. "CALYPSO has helped us maintain our tolerances a thousand fold and was able to help us automate measuring form geometry in steel or in graphite."

"The ZEISS CONTURA has automated the complete measuring process and reduced our measuring time," says Judice. "We were able to eliminated non-value added processes and maintain flexibility without sacrificing product quality. We now have a closed-loop manufacturing process."

For more information contact:

Carl Zeiss IMT Corp.

6250 Sycamore Lane

Maple Grove, MN 55369

763-744-2400

Fax: 763-533-0219

www.zeiss.com/imt

www.zeiss.com