The sharp rise of labour costs combined with reduced Company earnings, credit squeeze and high interest rates made it necessary to introduce an automation programme that, for the same quality product, gives a significant cost reduction with reasonable investments.
Two main operations in seal production which require the major part of the manual labour and increase costs are:
This paper describes a new kind of automatic system with which these operations can be accomplished.
A special equipment called “Speedy Mould” was built for the curing operations. The essential part of this is a 14 station rotary injection machine. The equipment is suitable for handling nitrile, acrylic, viton, silicone and flourinated rubbers.
The control operations of the seals is made by an electromechanical equipment that checks automatically the ID and OD, the eccentricity, the lip pressure and the presence of the springs. The dimensions are controlled by an electrical instrument, the lip pressure by a spring loaded split mandrel and the presence of the springs by a magnetic sensor.