GL Precision Tube runs tight-tolerance ERW product on all three of its tube mills as a lot as 300 FPM. Pictures: Lincoln Brunner
Typically the drive to excel comes from inside, and customarily it comes out of your prospects. Nonetheless for the actually formidable, it comes every strategies.
That’s the place GL Precision Tube in Aurora, Unwell., found itself numerous months previously when it obtained wind of a model new instrument from Xiris Automation that the tubemaker thought may strengthen its place on the market.
For the earlier yr and a half, GL Precision Tube has been using Xiris’ WI-3000 laser profiling inspection system, which inspects for inconsistencies throughout the edge alignment and the weld bead {of electrical} resistance welded (ERW) tubing rolling off its three mills. (The company plans to restart a fourth shortly, in response to Fundamental Supervisor Matt Kuhn.) That system moreover shows the peak and the freeze line of the weld bead—every of which should be saved inside strict tolerances, notably with the thinner wall thicknesses which have become the norm at GL.
Then, at first of this yr, the company chosen in order so as to add one different instrument: Xiris’ latest experience, the HF-PreWeld system. The system makes use of Xiris’ XIR-1800, a high-dynamic-range, short-wave infrared thermal digicam. This thermal scanning system tracks the temperature of the weld bead and strip edges however as well as variables identical to the weld gap on an ERW tube mill.
This latest system moreover provides GL Precision Tube a instrument it had not at all had sooner than—the pliability to hint in precise time the V angle of the two strip edges being joined. And though GL was the first North American tube producer to place within the system, the company bought it for all of its mills on the same time, every on account of it felt it was an enchancment on a competing system it had been using and as a result of success it has seen with the WI-3000.
“If we think about that it helps, we want it to be on every mill,” Kuhn acknowledged. “We’re not going to shortchange ourselves and by no means give ourselves the devices that we now have to ensure that if we advertise, it stays supplied.”
Complementary Monitoring Strategies = Top quality
GL manufactures spherical, sq., rectangular, and specialty-shaped mechanical tubing from 5/8 to 3 in. OD in many various wall thicknesses and grades of steel.
The 75-person agency, started by Kuhn’s father, Chuck, in 2007, focuses on tight-tolerance tubing that the majority firms each cannot or choose to not make as a result of demanding specs.
The perfect driver, in truth, is weight low cost, which suggests additional high-strength, low-alloy tubes with thinner partitions that are 20% to 30% lighter than standard carbon steel tubing of the equivalent energy. Kuhn acknowledged that 12 years previously, if the company ran a batch of HSLA Grade 50 steel, it was a large deal.
“Now I’d say the most common grade we run is HSLA Grade 70,” Kuhn well-known. “That’s type of plain vanilla for us at this degree.”
The Xiris packages monitoring GL’s tubing observe numerous variables, along with the peak and freeze line of the weld bead, the temperature of the bead and strip edges, and the V angle of the strip edges throughout the weld subject.
Consuming about 3,000 tons of steel a month at mill speeds as a lot as 300 FPM, the usual administration requires on GL are extreme. Nonetheless that rarified space is the place the company has found its mannequin of a comfort zone.
“Frankly, that’s the place we’ve excelled,” Kuhn acknowledged. “That’s the place we’ve been able to do an excellent job, and it’s what’s allowed us to proceed to develop, nearly by means of phrase of mouth solely. We now have a superb crew with some good experience, good knowledge.”
The company actually makes use of 5 inspection methods on its tube—the laser profiling system, thermal digicam inspection, eddy current testing to detect weld flaws, metallurgical analysis of the weld, and customary in-process dangerous exams. The reality is, on all three of its mills, the company employs devoted prime quality technicians whose solely job is to do numerous dangerous exams on sample tubes from every slit coil.
The outcomes of the dangerous exams are recorded throughout the agency’s ERP system, in perpetuity, to supply 100% traceability on all merchandise. A day’s worth of producing on a component will embrace 50 to 60 dangerous exams at minimal. These exams embrace a wall-to-wall flattening of the tube with the weld on the 12 o’clock place, one on the three o’clock place, a reverse bend, flaring the tube, and piercing the weld. If the first article inspection (FAI) tube passes all of those exams, it could presumably go to sharpening and etching. Solely after the tubing passes the entire FAI and in-process inspections is it then packed and shipped.
All 5 most important objects are thorough and wanted, nevertheless all of them have limitations. So, Kuhn and his workforce decided to take a place on this latest thermal inspection instrument so that by means of complementary inspection utilized sciences, they’re going to leisure easy understanding that their tubing persistently meets the rising prime quality requires of GL’s prospects.
“They’re all a little bit of the puzzle,” Kuhn acknowledged. “With the eddy current and the Xiris packages that we now have, I actually really feel like they cowl each other’s limitations. In tandem, they supply us a extreme diploma of confidence, together with our dangerous testing.
“The patron base that we service, with their demanding features and expectations, we wished to do each half we would to attenuate the potential for producing and transport tubing with a nasty weld.”
From a top quality administration standpoint, the intention of real-time options on that host of variables is to help tubemakers like GL create and protect a gradual operation, acknowledged Cornelius Sawatzky, product sales supervisor for Xiris Automation in Burlington, Ont.
“If we run a gradual course of, we most certainly have an excellent product coming off the mill,” Sawatzky acknowledged. “We’re capable of set some limits spherical a nominal working fluctuate, and if it strikes out of fluctuate, it could presumably create an alarm. They may make barely adjustment and instantaneously, they’re once more to their nominal place.
“Just a few of [GL’s] clientele is throughout the automotive sector, and common throughout the automotive sector, the requirements … are very demanding. They’re not very appreciative of any nonconforming supplies. Inside the auto sector, it was a pair parts per million of nonconformance was type of your run price. Today that sector [is] principally saying zero parts per million.”
Top quality Administration: A Group Train
To satisfy these specs, together with its testing devices and methods, the company has adopted what portions to a companywide prime quality administration custom: Every employee is predicted to report a product flaw within the occasion that they see one. It’s just one additional means the company maintains its edge.
“I inform of us, ‘Everyone seems to be accountable for top of the range,’” Kuhn acknowledged. “People positively have duties that they’re keyed in course of, nevertheless all people has a accountability for top of the range. In case you’re strolling to the rest room and in addition you see a tube that obtained hit by a forklift, the expectation is that you just degree it out to anybody. We’ve obtained an excellent crew. They care. It’s been pivotal for us, and we’re capable of’t do one thing and never utilizing a superb crew.
“We cope with them correct. And I really feel it’s evidenced by the reality that they get their family members or friends jobs [here] on account of, hopefully, we’re an excellent place to work. And it ends up being reciprocal. We try to cope with them correct, they normally in flip do what they’re going to to help the company.”
The GL of us don’t faux to produce probably the most reasonably priced product out there in the marketplace—they know they don’t. Nonetheless with the monitoring and qc they’ve put in place, they do goal to supply the easiest common price. As Kuhn likes to say, you presumably can’t study prime quality into a component. Nonetheless, having good inspection items can and does help administration the manufacturing course of.
“They pay for themselves any number of events, and in addition you not at all know for sure the problems you could possibly have prevented,” Kuhn acknowledged. “So, it’s laborious to quantify exactly how loads it is, nevertheless the factors that you just don’t have on account of you could possibly have the packages we do, as soon as extra, is a little bit of the puzzle.
“With the market we service being largely automotive or vehicle-related … within the occasion that they get a foot of tube or a little bit of recut tube with a nasty weld, they’re saying, ‘OK, present to me that each half else is sweet sooner than I benefit from it.’ The one possibility to try the weld after manufacturing is to destroy it, and at the moment, after you could possibly have destroyed each half, there’s nothing left to utilize. Subsequently, the goal is to utilize the entire devices that are on the market to help assure weld integrity is not a problem.”