In the intricate web of manufacturing, even the smallest oversight can have significant repercussions. One such concern that plagues the industry is the issue of loose bolts. Tiny but potent adversaries capable of derailing operations, compromising safety, and causing costly downtime. To combat this threat, manufacturers employ various error-proofing techniques aimed at tightening the nuts on loose bolts and bolstering overall reliability.
The Problem
Our customer has a bearing assembly station that has more than 20 bolts in a circular pattern. Many loose and unseated bolts were successfully passing through the station regardless of the smart tooling that was implemented, batch sequences with rehit detections, etc.
This issue had become so prevalent that they were requiring operators at the inspection station to go around to all 20-plus bearing bolts with a click wrench to ensure that no loose bearing bolts would make it into the field, which defeats the purpose of smart tooling in the first place. These added precautions were becoming time-consuming and expensive.
The Solution
Using export data from the controller, our team was able to point out some possible red flags. We downloaded controller results into ToolsNet 8, which we utilized to execute a product report of an actual serial number that was flagged. It is much easier to navigate the data in ToolsNet 8 as opposed to controller reports. You can use box analysis to isolate serial numbers of products with loose bolts and implement live notifications to proactively catch loose bolts on products in the future, allowing quicker fixes with lower rework costs.
Additionally, we used the results to leverage the importance of position tracking to tie specific results to specific bolts in the circular pattern and enforce a star tightening pattern to ensure an equal distribution to force around the part to minimize quality issues.
The customer has agreed to an Industrial Location Guidance (ILG) project to retrofit their existing arms which opens up future opportunities for additional ILG projects. The ToolsNet 8 results were used to educate the customer on internal tightening program optimization with angle limits.
To sum it up
This win-win partnership solution turned a quality issue into an opportunity to convert a joint fastened application into a station controlled application with error-proofing components.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Atlas Copco can take error proofing to the next level, contact us to schedule a demo today!
