PHD, Inc.

During the production of railcar wheels, a gripper is used to pick up sand molds from an oven and transfer them to the next process. This application uses 13 grippers.

A customer used a bladder-type gripper to grip the inside diameter of the sand mold. The bladder would break due to abrasion and heat and would need to be replaced weekly. The gripper itself would fill with sand and required replacement every two weeks. The customer needed to reduce its significant monthly expenses incurred through gripper replacement costs, labor, and downtime involved in maintaining the grippers.

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

Cost Savings and Increased Uptime

PHD's customized gripper was tested for approximately one year with no failures, driving value in the customer's application by increasing productivity through reduced downtime and improving efficiency through reduced maintenance costs. The customized solution was purchased with the costs saved in only three months of failure-free operation.