Beyond “Outside the Box”

A company paid good money for engine valves with holes in them?  Are you kidding me?  No!  There was a project to investigate the wear characteristics of camshafts and followers, testing different materials, different coatings and different lubricants.  An engine was built with only complete heads mounted on an engine block that had only a crank shaft and the cam-drive chain.  An electric motor turned the crank shaft.

In order to run the engine at high speed and have proper pressure on the cam lobes, racing valves were installed in the heads.  These sodium-filled racing valves were very expensive and when one broke during a test run, it was a hazardous mess that had to be cleaned up.  The solution was to use stock valves, made by the millions that were lightened to racing valve specs.  The point was that they did not need to seal a combustion chamber, but only put tension on the valve train.  Therefore, drilling holes and facing them off reduced the weight but did not affect their functioning in this application.

The picture above shows two rather “customized” automotive engine valves.  They were the first (and only) iteration of the concept.  Amazingly, they each hit the target weight within a tenth of a gram!  When you work focused and diligently, you sometimes get lucky.  Good luck is always welcomed.

Another example of “Beyond ‘Outside the Box’” thinking was when a very expensive electronic assembly had to be removed (singulated) from a metal strip that contained many assemblies.  A great deal of time and material had already been expended building the assemblies on the strip.  The obvious answer was to punch out the assemblies which they did.  However, the scrap rate due to damaged assemblies resulting from this punching out process was intolerable.

The solution to this problem was to not punch out the assemblies, but to hold the assemblies securely and punch out the carrier strip.  If the carrier strip was damaged during the singulating operation, no problem!  The strip was scrap anyway!  Not only did the machine that was designed and built to do this operation reduce the scrap rate to zero, but productivity was increased by 400% as now, one operator could do as much as four operators did previously.

We have long since gone way beyond “outside the box” thinking.  You will not believe the brilliant creativity we bring to your product design and manufacturing / assembly issues.  How can we assist you to take your product to the next generation?