Tales from the Quality World- the Baltec

Tales from the Quality World — Episode 4 Baltec

My current employer has a really old Baltec rivet forming machine which brought back reminders of issues we previously had while using Baltecs years ago at another job.

The Baltecs I am familiar with are a rivet forming machine. The high end ones have a ‘brain,’ a controller with which you can program travel distance and which also has a transducer for force feedback. Baltecs are especially ideal for forming rivet heads on actuating products like hinges and arm-rests which cannot be too had to move but also not so loose as to be sloppy.

The main difference between Baltec and its competitors, notably Orbitform, is that a Baltec tool doesn’t just come down and circle around the material to form the rivet. It’s actuator inside the tooling is more like the Spyrograph toy you used to play with to create shapes. The tooling is designed specifically for your application with looser or tighter spyro-movement.

I have actually been to the Baltec facility in November 2000 outside Zurich Switzerland when over in Europe for a different quality issue.

Anyway, the two issues I am going to describe are not directly the fault or caused by Baltec, but instead by other attendant issues.

At this previous job I was in charge of launch for seat hinges for the Jeep Grand Cherokee of which one ship-to customer was a JCI plant in Graz Austria.

Issue #1: Barcode and testing

When we parroduced these hinges, every hinge was tested for actuator force after a barcode was attached and scanned and the data was to link to that barcode. We had a barcode printer lineside. The operators were to press a button on the Allen Bradley interface to get a new barcode which would print and then be placed on a hinge for scanning followed by testing. The printers were a never ending source of problems for the IT department who had to come to the floor regularly due to jamming.

While out on the floor one day, I noticed an operator hitting the “print” button on the printer, rather than the Interface panel. A quick investigation found that hitting the printers button merely re-printed the last number that was sent to it! Discussion with the operator revealed they had been doing this since the start of the day before and six hundred hinges were tested and their data applied to the barcode- except that with each subsequent scan of the barcode on the most recent part, that data would over- write all previous data. Though all hinges did pass their test parameters, we had data ONLY for the 600th part that was shipped!

Solution: The IT department asked if we really needed printers lakeside and I told them no. We merely needed sequential and unrepeated barcode numbers. IT then removed the printers and began supplying each tester with a roll of pre-printed barcodes.

Issue #2: False pass allowed sloppy hinges to ship

While I was in Graz at the customer plant for a quality issue on different parts (poor paint by contracted paint shop), four boxes of hinges arrived and were found to have sloppy operation. Their rivets were not formed down well enough, but yet they passed our tester for some reason.

Our options were to either ship all for boxes of these heavy parts back to the USA for rework or find somewhere closer to Graz to get that done. I contacted Baltec in Switzerland and found that the only place that had a unit with a large enough forming tool needed was at their location outside Zurich! Interestingly, lots of smaller units were all over Austria but were set up in peoples’ basements for home shop assembly operations of scissors or pliers.

So Sylvia and Michael in the customer logistics team had the boxes shipped to Baltec and I flew to Zurich. I drove the rental car out to the plant Friday afternoon and was given a brief tour, as well as a beer in the conference room. The day was over for them at 4pm I suppose. Hotel for the weekend and a drive up to Mulhouse France as a side trip, then back to Baltec Monday morning where they set up their machine to our parameters and a technician and I reworked all 600 parts which were then shipped back to Graz.

Back home, our controls engineer and I worked to determine why the parts passed falsely. He then had a light bulb epiphany. The machine integrator we contracted to make our assembly and test equipment had bundled the 220 volt electrical wires with the computerized “brain” controller of the machines and the electromagnetic field interfered with proper computer communication. Roger then separated the wiring and rerouted the computer lines well away from the power lines and the problem was solved.

Anyway, I also need to put a plug in for Baltec. In all my dealings with the company I have found them (and their local representives) extremely helpful and their product of a high level of craftsmanship.

Many of my tales do not involve me necessarily as the problem solver. The point is not to brag on issues I resolved personally, but to relay anecdotes which you might file away and recall some day should a similar or same issue arise during your investigations.

Until next time.