PHD, Inc.

A workholding clamp is used on an automotive carpet transfer line. The clamp grasps the carpet after which a horizontal motion moves the carpet to the next workstation.

An automotive interiors industry customer had been using a competitor's clamp that was limited in how far the jaws could open. The contour of the end of the molded carpet required a larger than normal clamp opening for the material to fit within the jaws. In the application, if the clamp does not open far enough to adequately grip the carpet, the carpet jams on the tooling and drops the carpet to the floor. Any carpet that is dropped must be scrapped.

PHD's Custom Solutions Engineers and Sales team worked closely with the carpet molder to understand and address the shortcomings of the competitor unit. PHD modified its standard Series GRM "K" jaw style clamp by increasing the jaws opening angle and length and adding special jaw tips. The adjustments successfully addressed the issues and significantly reduced the incidence of the dropped carpet.

Results

Reduced Scrap and Increased Uptime

The manufacturer has realized a significant reduction in scrap costs by reducing dropped parts and a reduction in downtime required to remove the scrap and fix the machine jams.