Bridging the Knowledge Gap: AI Powered Information Systems in Manufacturing
By: Aaron Phipps and Patrick Byrne
How Automation Can Be Used As An Employee Development Platform in The New ‘Difficult-to-Hire and Retain’ World
Featured in 70th Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition 2023, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Monday August 14, 2023
By: Aaron Phipps
The current business landscape is highly competitive, and organizations are struggling to hire and retain employees with the right skills and attitude.
At MPI, we have experienced similar challenges finding talented individuals who have the aptitude to learn the skills required for our wax room pattern injection and pattern assembly business.
Historically, the wax room has been considered a low-pay training-intensive department, making it challenging to retain employees who are satisfied doing these tasks as a career. Training to make manual assemblies used to take 3-6 months to produce high quality, repeatable assemblies. Along the way there were high scrap rates and lost opportunities. Through automation, however, we were able to transform this department into a lower-skill entry-level high-value-added position, attracting employees who are enticed by working with technology.
Low Volume Automation, Challenges and Advantages.
Featured in October 2016 Issue of InCast Magazine Presented during the 63rd Annual Technical Conference & Expo,
October 16 – 19, 2016
By: Aaron Phipps of MPI, Inc.
At this year’s ICI Technical Conference in Columbus, Ohio, Aaron Phipps, MPI’s Vice President Manufacturing & Engineering, presented the third of a three-paper series discussing cost reduction through process improvement in the wax room. The final paper focused squarely on utilizing automation in a low volume environment.
Historically, automation has been thought to be unachievable for the ‘job shop.’ The prevailing belief is that only high volume or high value parts could be automated with significant cost savings and that low volume, low value parts were too expensive to automate, and not worth the effort.
The challenge MPI faced was to help their customer automate parts without making costly changes to their process. The customer was regularly given an order for parts to produce in short runs with little to no minimum guarantee of future orders other than what was provided by the initial PO. MPI worked with their customer to develop a unique automation solution that included some specific design constraints including; no major die modifications, no major runner modifications, short set up time on new jobs, and easy job changeover.
MPI chose to focus on a few representative parts to prove out their concept. This paper details every step of the project including the many challenges MPI faced along the way. It also describes the many advantages that automation can achieve in reducing variability.
Download the Full Technical Paper | Download the Full Presentation
Overcoming Common Wax Injection Problems: The First Step toward Automation
Featured in March 2016 Issue of InCast Magazine Presented during the 14th World Conference in Investment Casting Paris, France, April 19, 2016
By: Jeffrey Rich & Aaron Phipps of MPI, Inc
A requirement for automated injection of wax patterns is the ability to make defect free patterns. MPI has collaborated with two US foundries in 2015 to demonstrate how quality dies combined with the proper application of process controls can eliminate common wax injection defects.
Demonstrated results have shown significant reduction of scrap in the wax room, increased throughput and higher casting yields. The results were a dramatic reduction in scrap, reducing both operating costs and rework costs while dramatically increasing throughput. In both cases, the customer realized a corresponding casting yield increase. In one of these cases, the success of eliminating scrap from the wax injection process opened the door to automation of the wax injection of this family of parts.
Current Problems In The Wax Room And How They Are Best Overcome
Presented during the 62nd ICI Technical Conference & Equipment Expo Oct. 21, 2015
By: Jeffrey Rich & Aaron Phipps of MPI, Inc. and Andrew Miller & Andrew Bomberger of Tech Cast, LLC.
For this year’s ICI show, we wanted to find a topic that has relevance to all investment casting foundries and may potentially help solve problems that they face on a daily basis. To do this, we needed to understand exactly what the foundries’ issues are as they relate to the wax room. We had our thoughts, based on years of experience dealing with foundries, making wax injectors, using wax injectors and the generally accepted faults known to exist in the wax room. Our goal was to validate our beliefs in a manner that left no doubt that the issues found and described were true wax-room issues that cause defects….
Download the Full Technical Paper
Wax Pattern Making: Can Variation in the Wax Make a Difference?
As seen in the March 2015 issue of InCast
By: Jeffrey Rich
It is astounding that investment casting has been around for some 5,000 years, yet we still have trouble consistently making high-quality wax patterns. Of course, for those who understand the nuances of wax and wax injection, the problem is clear. However, for those who still live in the dark ages of investment casting and think of wax injection as nothing more than a wax pump, the answers are a bit more elusive. Wax pattern quality is dependent on a litany of variables, and making the perfect pattern every time can seem like pure luck or even black magic. Truth be told, it may be impossible to get a perfect pattern every time, but with a process that is in control, it is possible to get predictable results from each injection…
“Automation” The Why and How
November 9, 2014 Presented during the International Investment Casting Seminar at Kaohsiung, Taiwan
October 6, 2014 Presented during the 61st ICI Technical Conference and Equipment Expo at Covington, KY
By: Bruce Phipps
Good Morning. Most of you know that MPI is a supplier of Wax Room Equipment. Although my paper “Automation” the Why and How, will focus on the wax room, the results will show up in your castings. The results… more castings shipped and castings with tighter tolerances!
Why should you automate? The simple answer is because automation can make your company MONEY. Automation works!
Wax Room Automation Improves Dimensional Consistency and Balance of Turbo Wheels
Presented during the 26th EICF International Conference on Investment Casting at Lugano Switzerland June 15th, 2014
Good morning and thank you for inviting me to speak today.
I find this a very interesting venue, not only competing foundries but competing manufacturers all under the same roof, and all with a focus on turbo chargers. It is also very interesting that all of us in this room are consumers, at one level or another, of Turbo Chargers. Whether in our own personal car or the trucks that deliver our products, we are all looking for the benefits that turbo chargers bring to keep performance up and operating costs down while helping the environment. All of us here today are putting pressure on one another as we push the boundaries for more fuel efficient vehicles. It is this constant demand that continues to push the turbo wheel design to require more dimensional consistency as well as improved balance in order for the wheels to be able to perform at higher and higher speeds…
Automation and Digital Technology in the Wax Room
Presented to the Tokyo Japan Foundry Society, Inc. September, 2013, Tokyo Japan
By: Bruce Phipps
There is little question that we live in a digital world. The question becomes, how can we put the information to work? This paper serves to answer that question specifically as digital data exists in the wax room of an investment casting foundry. Meeting customer expectations has been a driving force for decades and many different quality management systems have evolved to achieve this requirement. Business management dictates that any successful program provides a sound ROI. A common theme with these programs is data collection and analysis …
Digital Technology Makes Strides in Investment Casting Wax Room
As seen in the March 2013 issue of InCast
By: Bruce Phipps
Until the introduction of digital technology, only minimum controls were available in the investment casting wax room. Since digital controls are now an option, operators can visually see what is happening with the wax temperature, flow, and pressure each and every injection. Digital technology allows tighter tolerances, less variability. No matter how sophisticated the instrumentation, however, the application of that instrumentation and how it is used to control the process is the real challenge. This article will review the information available with digital controls and how it can be applied to reduce wax room scrap and achieve higher casting yields…
Digital Technology in the Wax Room
Presented to: ICI 59th Conference and Expo in Nashville, October 2012
How Digitization is used to improve and Control the Process
By: Bruce Phipps
There is little question that we live in a digital world. The question becomes how can we put the information to work? This paper serves to answer that question specifically as digital data exists in the wax room of an investment casting foundry. Meeting customer expectations has been a driving force for decades and many different quality management systems have evolved to achieve this requirement. Business management dictates that any successful program provides a sound ROI. A common theme with these programs is data collection and analysis. Our digital world makes both the collection of key metrics and the analysis of those metrics more much more economical. All this effort has lead toward more robust process control. The core of this paper deals with how to collect appropriate data and analyze that data for the highest levels of process control in the wax room. Using the latest model wax injection and assembly equipment allows this level of process control and data collection for both qualitative and quantitative analysis. In turn this leads to sound operational decision netting the most efficient production of both wax patterns and assemblies.
Digital Technology in the Wax Room
Presented to: EICF in Hungary, September 2012
How Digitization is used to improve and Control the Process
By: Bruce Phipps
There is little question that we live in a digital world. The question becomes how can we put the information to work? This paper serves to answer that question specifically as digital data exists in the wax room of an investment casting foundry. Meeting customer expectations has been a driving force for decades and many different quality management systems have evolved to achieve this requirement. Business management dictates that any successful program provides a sound ROI. A common theme with these programs is data collection and analysis. Our digital world makes both the collection of key metrics and the analysis of those metrics more much more economical. All this effort has lead toward more robust process control. The core of this paper deals with how to collect appropriate data and analyze that data for the highest levels of process control in the wax room. Using the latest model wax injection and assembly equipment allows this level of process control and data collection for both qualitative and quantitative analysis. In turn this leads to sound operational decision netting the most efficient production of both wax patterns and assemblies.
Automation – The Why and How
Presented to: German Foundry Society in Germany, September 2012
By: Bruce Phipps
Many people look at automation as a way of reducing costs through labor reduction. And this is a reasonable approach. After all, it is a sure way to get a capital package through upper management if you can provide a guaranteed ROI, return on investment, and labor reduction is often times a guaranteed approach.
The problem all foundries face today is variability; Pattern to Pattern Variation and Assembly to Assembly Variation. And those all to familiar inclusions in your castings that are attributed to poor quality wax welds; poor quality wax assemblies.
What can we do to put consistency into your wax room?
What can we do to insure repeatability of assemblies that are going into your down stream operations?
Why Automate
Automation = Repeatability!
• Pattern to Pattern Repeatability
• Assembly to Assembly Repeatability
• Casting to Casting Repeatability
Think about this. If you could reduce all your process variables, for your entire foundry operation, to be within the tolerance limit you have set for each step of your process, your casting yield would be 100%. Your scrap begins in the wax room, making it very logical to automate your foundry by starting in the wax room and automating as much of the process as possible.
Our customers have seen huge productivity gains from the automated cells as compared to an operator controlled process.
Profit Through Innovation
Presented to: JFS World Conference in Japan, April 2012
By: Bruce Phipps
MPI is revolutionizing the technology of producing and processing wax patterns through automation. The benefits of automation are undeniable… by eliminating operator variation and providing accurate process control you will not only see substantial increases in terms of productivity and uniformity, it will have a dramatic impact on profitability as well.
Many organizations have not investigated automation thoroughly because they think of automation in its full scale, instead of looking at how automating a single process can produce tremendous results. By providing single automation solutions, evaluating each operation an automation plan can be created that will work for you and provide you with the benefits. By providing automation in modules, affordable solutions can be created tailored to your specific needs.
Automating a process will significantly improve quality and reduce current cycle times. The highly accurate robotic pickup and placement of patterns eliminates defects caused by inconsistent operations and will result in higher yields.
This paper will cover best practices, techniques, going through the automation process and expected results. It’s our plan to use actual customer experiences, (case studies) and the results they achieved.
Profit Through Innovation
Presented to: The 58th Technical Conference and Equiptment Expo, October 2011
By: Bruce Phipps
MPI is revolutionizing the technology of producing and processing wax patterns through automation. The benefits of automation are undeniable… by eliminating operator variation and providing accurate process control you will not only see substantial increases in terms of productivity and uniformity, it will have a dramatic impact on profitability as well.
Many organizations have not investigated automation thoroughly because they think of automation in its full scale, instead of looking at how automating a single process can produce tremendous results. By providing single automation solutions, evaluating each operation an automation plan can be created that will work for you and provide you with the benefits. By providing automation in modules, affordable solutions can be created tailored to your specific needs.
Automating a process will significantly improve quality and reduce current cycle times. The highly accurate robotic pickup and placement of patterns eliminates defects caused by inconsistent operations and will result in higher yields.
This paper will cover best practices, techniques, going through the automation process and expected results. It’s our plan to use actual customer experiences, (case studies) and the results they achieved.
Automated Wax Cell Comparison
Automated Injecting / Assembly Cell – Phases of Automation Model 45 Injection with a Cartesian Robot VS. Model 55 Injection with a 6 Axis Robot
Profits through Education
Presented to: Investment Casting Institute Technical Conference & Expo, October 2009
By: Bruce Phipps
The current economic climate is a real impetus to cut costs, and I suspect most of you are in the cost cutting mode today. The goal of any company is to make process changes so that more money is made per casting sold. Management’s responsibility is to make the right decisions based on sound data. Data comes from the shop floor. Usable data comes from properly educated people who understand the process. Understanding the process and applying the correct process control comes from education.
This paper will cover the benefits of educating your employees and what the ICI is doing to help train your employees so that accurate data can be presented to management allowing them to make better decisions. I will review the certification course and push the fact that we will be having our 10th year as well as introduce the upcoming Process Control course.
I will be looking for examples (case studies) form foundries to support the need for training their employees in process control.
Take Control of Your Wax Room
Presented to: Modern Casting Magazine, October 2008
By: Bruce Phipps
Knowing Your Investment Casting Process
Presented to: ICI Conference in Milwaukee, October 2008
By: Bruce Phipps
Casting Yields are improved through Automation and Process Control in the Wax Room
Presented to: 12th World Conference on Investment Casting, October 2008
By: Bruce Phipps
In today’s economy it’s necessary for all foundries to work on reducing their casting costs while improving their casting quality. This has become part of every day life for any foundry that is able to remain competitive in the world market. MPI would like to share some of the before and after results experienced by some of our customers. These will include first hand accounts of quality improvements and productivity gains that foundries have experienced as they implemented automation and process control in the wax room.
Profit and Process Control Begins in the Wax Room
Presented to: National Conference on Investment Casting, December 2006
By: Bruce Phipps
Knowing Your Wax Room Process
Presented to: Investment Casting Institute Technical Conference & Expo, October 2006
By: Bruce Phipps
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to run any die on any wax injector and not have to hold up production because “That’s the only machine that die will run on”?
This paper will make it clear why, even after calibrations have been made, two “identical” machines may not create two identical wax patterns from the same wax and die. The paper will cover the process control variables in the wax room and their interaction with one another. There will be an understanding of what can be done to match the performance of two machines even from different manufactures. As well as a review of new technology, now available that can provide an operator with meaningful data, which will allow them to maintain a machines operating performance.
Casting Yields Are Generated in the Wax Room
The pressures on foundries today to maintain a competitive edge in the world market is staggering. Countries with lower operating costs have taken away many high volume jobs, and they are doing them with equal quality and lower prices. How are we going to regain a competitive advantage? By operating differently. We need to step back and look at the whole foundry operation from a different vantage point.
Two areas that will gain significant casting yields are:
1. Decreasing, or even eliminating rework in every step of your operation.
2. Pour less metal to create the same amount of castings.