Why scheduled maintenance is essential for part quality
When there are pressures on the production line and a lot of orders to deliver, completing even scheduled maintenance can slip in favour of customer demands
As well as costing more in the long-term, delaying maintenance can start to cost customers too, both in terms of time and the quality of the parts produced. To make sure that our customers don’t feel the effects of a system breakdown, we carry out regular maintenance and checks on all of our machines. Here’s why.
Maintenance and part quality
Maintaining a plastic injection moulding machine requires a huge amount of attention to detail. When combined with the pressure of client delivery targets, this can make it easy for scheduled maintenance to slip down the priority list and for businesses to act only when a machine breaks down.
However, regular maintenance is as essential to safeguarding the quality and reliability of the manufactured products as it is to keeping the process up and running. This has far-reaching implications as a wide range of products are produced using plastic injection moulding. If a component failed due to structural weaknesses in the moulding process, it could not only affect customers but potentially be dangerous to the public too.
What needs to be maintained?
According to Gleaner, a lubricant supplier for injection moulding machines, poor lubricant maintenance alone can reduce a factory’s productivity by 5-20%. This means that each check or inspection needs to be thorough and detailed.
The most common maintenance problems arise from water leaks. Typically, leaks appear around the static seals or where different metal types meet each other. Unfortunately, many companies apply short-term fixes instead of a full repair when this type of problem occurs. As this can lead to inferior quality parts and a large repair bill in the long-term, we always opt for a full repair.
Faults in hot-runners and water-line issues are also a regular cause of mould performance problems. Therefore, adequate lubrication, tightening and cleaning of all mould components is integrated into our schedule.
We also schedule this type of cleaning and inspection after a set number of cycles. That way, machines are being checked regularly and it’s possible to plan around jobs while providing more structure than a calendar date, which can fall victim to last-minute rushes and delays.
How will maintenance change in the future?
Technological advances are making maintenance easier to work into a busy manufacturing schedule. We are investing in the latest technology to enable remote maintenance and servicing. This allows machines to be monitored 24 hours a day.
This constant monitoring can provide greater insight and forewarning on required maintenance than local inspections. This helps to reduce downtime and increase machine productivity, which ultimately leads to higher-quality components.
This type of technology will mean that injection moulding machines will soon also be able to make decisions about when, and crucially what, maintenance is required long before a human operator would notice a difference in output.
With this technology, manufacturers like us will be able to perform maintenance only when it’s required with minimum human intervention and before the quality of the components produced is impacted. This will provide benefits both to manufacturers and customers, who will see a reduction in costs and consistent high quality in their parts.
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Questions?
Email us at sales@essentracomponents.co.uk or speak to one of our experts for further information on the ideal solution for your application 0345 528 0474.