Design Of Experiment Qualitative Effect Of Prep Shape...

Design of Experiment Qualitative Effects of Prep Shape and Viscosity on Compression Molding Processing 1. Background Compression molding is the first successful technique to develop a variety of composite products from rubber, plastic and other materials. It is ideal for low to medium production volumes and is a particularly useful molding process for molding gaskets, seals, and large, bulky parts. It is a widely used, efficient and economical production method for many products, particularly low production volumes of medium to large parts and higher cost materials. However, compression molding often provides poor product consistency and difficulty in controlling flash, which is excess material attached to a molded, forged, or cast†¦show more content†¦The process managers reported that they had a recurring quality issue and they had reason to believe the issue to be due to supplier material performance. The current supplier did not seem to be able to make improvements, so HEXPOL Compounding offered to provide a small technical team to investigate the problem with their own product. This i s was an opportunity to gain sales from this customer by performing a study to improve their process and by providing optimized product to fit their needs. HEXPOL began by reverse engineering the competitor’s product and analyzed the provided samples for root-causes to the quality issues. After examination performed by HEXPOL Analytical lab, there were small white particulates found within the provided compound. This dispersion issue, after being identified as a styrene resin, was quickly solved by tweaking the provided recipe; there were a few parts of SBR (Styrene-Butadiene Rubber), the most probable source of the undispersed styrene, which was removed and replaced with more carbon black. This did not affect physical properties of the compound. GASKET-O wished to minimize scrap material and therefore improve quality in the process, but the trend for this production line was cyclic in nature; for days, very few reports of defective or scrap tools came in the process, then large sums of defects arose across the line. According to the process engineers at theShow MoreRelatedQuality Improvement328284 Words   |  1314 PagesEngineering, was Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and was Director of the Program in Industrial Engineering. Dr. Montgomery has research and teaching interests in engineering statistics including statistical quality-control techniques, design of experiments, regression analysis and empirical model building, and the application of operations research methodology to problems in manufacturing systems. He has authored and coauthored more than 190 technical papers in these fields and is the author