ACCO USA

Case History #3 - American Brands:"I would like to take this opportunity to confirm that the Tymac-equipped 150 ton die casting machine is meeting or exceeding our projected expectations."

- Patrick Bye, Engineering Manager

American Brands was using a 150-ton die casting machine to make staplers, but they were experiencing several problems. Many of the staplers produced suffered from poor fill. Surface finish was also a big problem, requiring a lot of treatment, if the part was salvageable at all. Overall, scrap rate was averaging 35%.

Tymac was asked to perform an engineering analysis, and made several recommendations, which American Brands followed, purchasing a SuperShot III, RTU-9000, LCM-9000, and a die-temperature control unit.

Their scrap rate promptly dropped...to ZERO.

The following table shows machine improvements achieved with the new Tymac equipment. This data was after only 2 weeks of running. Further fine-tuning improved things even more.

	without Tymac	with Tymac
Shots/Hour, average	170	227
Yield	65%	100%
Injection Velocity	26ips	51ips
Fill Time	30.79ms	16.0ms
Fill Velocity Variation, 3 sigma	46.8%	8.3%
Stroke Length Variation, 3 sigma	41.3%	4.9%
Final Pressure Variation	46.6%	6.5%
Metal Temperature, average	805	772
Locking tons required for zero flash	over 150 (not possible)	under 100

Apart from the improvements produced on the machine itself, post-casting processing was cut way down. This included buffing, painting, and inspection. These were largely unneeded because flash and porosity had both dropped to practically zero.

ACCO was so satisfied with the performance of Tymac's products, that they swiftly converted another machine.