Making accurate measurements is a crucial part of maintaining an efficient and cost-effective manufacturing process. Precise dimensional measurements should be made not only during the setup and quality control stages but also during each step of the production process.
A manufacturing process that’s reliable, repeatable, and scalable lowers the cost of manufacturing, giving your company a competitive edge. For a production process to fulfill this purpose, precise measurements must be taken often and regularly. Imprecise measurements can cause a host of potentially expensive problems, such as defective parts and bad batches.
Here are five potential manufacturing problems that can be avoided by taking precise measurements throughout each step of your production process.
1- Defective Parts
Each defective part of your production process turns out to represent a waste of raw materials and valuable time and energy. Add to that the time it takes Quality Control to identify and document the bad part, and one defective piece becomes quite expensive.
Considering the impact one defective part can have on your production costs, taking regularly scheduled, precise dimensional measurements of your machine’s moving parts is always the best practice.
2- Defective Batches
We’ve seen how costly it can be when your production process manufactures one defective part. When you scale that up to hundreds or even thousands of defective parts, you’re getting into some serious losses in time and money.
Tempting as it may be to skip parts of the quality assurance process in the interest of saving time, doing so can prove very costly. In the final tally, it’s always better to be safe than sorry–especially for large runs.
Bad pieces and defective batches are sometimes a result of human error and bad setups, but often they’re a product of poor inspection and irregular maintenance of production machinery. Improper alignment, friction, and striction are all potential causes of defective parts and batches.
3- Improper Alignment
The improper alignment of parts in your machines can result in excessive wear and tear and may ultimately cause machine failure. That’s because misaligned parts place undue stress on themselves, other moving parts, and ball bearings. In precision machinery, laser alignment will help alleviate this issue and preserve the life of your machine.
4- Friction
A moving part doesn’t have to be much larger than is required to create friction in your equipment. Friction can shorten your machine’s life and cause problems that result in defective parts or even equipment failure.
5- Stiction
The surface characteristics of your machine parts must be within appropriate tolerances too. A perfectly sized component with out-of-tolerance surface characteristics can cause stiction issues. Stiction can cause motors to strain and become less efficient. Stiction issues may also lead to defective parts and eventually to machine failure.
Keeping your machine parts properly aligned and replacing them as necessary is crucial if you want to avoid defective runs and machine failures. To learn more about the precision measurement devices that will help you maintain your valuable equipment, reach out to industry experts who can help you figure out the best option for your manufacturing needs.
