Friction cups increase production by 33%

Background

The customer is transferring sheet metal on a press machine. The part is an outer door from a minivan. The current competitive suction cups have been sticking and even when they do not stick they take longer to blow off causing the parts to miss pins inside of the press. The machine is performing at 10 strokes per minute (SPM). The customer would like to increase production.

Solution

It was decided to try the Piab DCF friction cups. These cups are specially designed for convex or concave oily surfaces such as on the curved outer door panel. They are made from a long lasting polyurethane called DURAFLEX® and normal wear on this cup does not affect the long term shear performance. As the DURAFLEX® material did not absorb oils, that eliminated the problem with the competitive cups sticking together. The smaller volume inside the DCF suction cup enabled the customer to speed up the press for more production.

Result

The Piab DCF friction cups released the parts much faster as compared to the competitive cups allowing to increase the press speed going from 10 SPM to 13 SPM. That translates to finishing an 1,800 part run in 2 hours 15 minutes, rather than 3 hours using the competitive cups.