Customer's Challenge
A set of rubber extruder machines has been failing erratically at a production plant in Jurong Island located in Singapore. Machine’s OEM inspected the machine and deemed that the problem was caused by the premature worn out of rotating screw and its inner bushes.
A few weeks after the change of new parts, the machines start to display abnormalities symptom again. As the possible root causes are not able to be pinpoint while achieving the targetedproduction schedule, our client decided to implement a temporary preventive maintenances measure by indent extra spare parts and replace the worn off components before the machine fails. This helps them to bid more time to source for solutions while fulfilling the required output volume daily.
Solution
Metal Machines started the engagement with the client by deploying an experienced field service engineer to have a better understanding on the machine condition and study the findings which OEM have gathered. To extract more information on the machinery, the Faro Vantage laser tracker was activated to perform checks on the extruder frame’s GD&T requirements such as perpendicularity, parallelism verification etc. Laser tracker also has the capability to display live reading on the measuring point which is very useful to facilitate any corrective process if needed.
The initial fault finding survey indicates the machine’s components alignment has deviated out from required tolerance. The site team proceeded with the alignment for the extruder frame which was made up of 5 interdependent structures that span over 5m in length. The alignment process was able to complete in the shortest time with the assistance of live reading verification from the laser tracker.
Benefits
Laser Tracker is able to measure large objects accurately with ease. Coupled with Spatial Analyser software, measured points are able to process, compute and check against the GD&T specification. The whole turnaround process of taking data, analyzing and alignment took only 4 days. The customer was very satisfied with the results after monitored the machine’s performance for 6 months and confidently re-engaged the team for other units in the plant.
