Development of a Co-Use Welding Jig for Shock-absorber Parts

Abstract

In order to enhance customer satisfaction and competitiveness, companies should be able to respond effectively to changes in the external environment, and the most important properties to partners in supply chain manufacturing according to orders is to cope with fluctuations in the volume of production. This study is about the co-use welding jig which has flexible size adjustment function according to parts’ size to improve the inefficiency of the existing process that welding after fixing parts manually during the machining of various types of vehicle shock absorber parts. The co-use welding jig, handled in this study, is a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) which can be freely applicable regardless the type of vehicles and provides a fast process and delivery system of parts when receiving orders based on an easy and flexible process of parts according to the desired size. For this, an upper jig, lower jig, and spring device that can be co-used in the variety of types of products and automatically control the median value as well as run-out defect are developed.Technology development resulted in shortening the machine set-up time by around 3/5 and cycle time by around 1/3. Defect rate was also reduced from 13% to below 1%.In addition, the developed technology could flexibly cope with numerous model changes by order of the variety of products. Furthermore, it could help shortening the product delivery time.

Keywords: Shock absorber base assembly, FMS, Co-use, Welding, Jig.