Process Monitoring

What is Process Monitoring?

This is simple enough - it means that your process (making a casting) is monitored (watched).

How does it work?

One of Tymac's LCM-9000 units is hooked up to a die casting machine, where it stores settings and collects data from each shot. An RTU-9000 or MTU-9000 unit stores the data from the LCM-9000, and produces graphs and analyses.

In practice, on the LCM-9000 you would program in all your settings, including tolerances for different variables. There are 2 levels of alarm possible: warning, and alarm. These will go off if your shot is not within the limits you have set.

If the alarm does go off, you can tell that the casting just produced will be no good, and take it out of circulation right then and there, avoiding wasting time on inspection or further processing.

If your machine produces lots of scrap, or is down for whatever reason, that is also recorded, so you will know how well your machine is doing. Perhaps it is due for maintenance.

If nothing goes wrong and you get a fine casting, you are able to save all the settings you used for the past shot, and to automatically load those settings again any time in the future. This saves time setting up, and it also helps improve quality by helping re-create a good shot.

Perhaps most valuable are the reports. You can see shot profiles, exception profiles, SPC reports (X-bar, scatter, distributions, ranges). These provide a complete, up-to-date, and thorough picture of your operation. Using these, you can tell exactly how well you are doing, spot any trends, and make any changes needed.