Custom Machine Fabrication 

We can provide...

Manufacturing can provide automated process machinery engineered to your specifications. Below are two case studies that illustrate in a tangible way that we have responded to specific challenges from our customers.

Case Study #1

A confectionary company requested Quality Manufacturing to design, develop, and prove out an automated technology and associated methodologies, practices, and techniques for handling food-grade, fragile, encapsulated liquids in a manufacturing setting.

Specific technological objectives included the following:

Design, develop, and prove out a technology and associated practices needed to fill a unique container with a precise number of unbroken mints (e.g. from 25-36 for a given package size) in a volume production setting. Up to 5% of packages may contain one less mint than the specified number, but according to industry regulations the average count must be the specified number or more.

Design, develop, and prove out the technologies and associated methodologies, practices, and techniques required to close the Momints package and apply a label to the front of the package without breaking mints.

Develop the practices required to achieve the above objectives in a volume production setting for up to 10-30 million manufactured units per year.

Develop the practices and techniques to consistently achieve a scrap rate of 2% or less.

The main advancement achieved would be the development of strategic new technologies and practices to manufacture food grade, encapsulated liquid products in a volume production setting. Achieving this advancement would be a significant achievement over our normal operating practices and enabled Quality Manufacturing to compete in new market areas (e.g. encapsulated fragrance beads, pharmaceuticals, etc.).

There would be many challenges in achieving this advancement. The mints themselves are fragile and release a sticky liquid when broken. A broken mint sticks to other mints and creates a sticky mass that tends to jam in machinery and packaging.

The unique dispenser, which our customer designed, was especially troublesome to work with. It was unique in that it was small, extremely thin, had a complex interior shape that snapped together to form an irregularly-shaped package, and had an integrated cover that released one mint at a time. The dispenser was designed to fit inside a cigarette package, not to facilitate manufacturing. (By comparison, competing products have packages with regular shapes and snap-on lids that were designed for ease of manufacturing.) For instance, the mouth design prevented the dispenser from being filled after it was snapped together, so it had to be assembled with the mints lying on top of it. This increased the risk of breaking a mint, but breakage could not easily be detected after assembly. If a mint broke inside the dispenser, the whole package had to be scrapped. The customer refused to change the package design in any way to facilitate manufacturing.

Even with all these challenges we were able to build such a machine that met all of the requirements. It is in production in our facility today.

Case Study #2

A European dental floss manufacturer approached us to design and manufacture a dental floss winding machine that would have a much shorter cycle time and require less operator intervention than any existing machines available in the world.

The overall technological objective was to design, develop, and prove out new methodologies and associated practices and techniques to wind dental floss on consumer packaging sized bobbins.

Specifically, we needed to develop improved practices and techniques to:

Reduce the time required to wind one bobbin, the so-called "cycle time", from 15s to 3.5s, 

Reduce the operator requirements to one operator for six machines, and

Ensure that the length of floss wound on to each bobbin is between 100% and 101% of the specified length, on a consistent basis, independent on the type of floss being wound.

The main challenge was to redesign the floss handling system to be able to work at a large, dramatic speed change, over 4x, compared to the rate of existing machines without increasing vibrations to an unacceptable level. A secondary challenge was to devise a new length measurement system which would work accurately with different types of floss and which would not be affected by wax stripped from the floss.

We were able to meet all the customers' requirements and are now in production.

Summary

Quality Manufacturing is capable of developing unique equipment in order to provide our customers with cost effective products. We do not as a practice sell this equipment; instead we put it into production in our own facility in order to streamline processes.