Investment News

Value added with the introduction of further new services for 2018

“In line with our continued investment plans we have taken delivery of a new Ultrasonic Welding Machine to complement our existing portfolio of core business services. It is aimed at creating more capacity and driving current standards even higher, thus demonstrating further continued commitment within the business and towards a growing customer base.”

Murray Humphries (Managing Director)

Efficiency, Control and Repeatability

The Ultrasonic Welding process benefits by using the part material itself to form a bond and does not introduce any additional materials such as glues or adhesives into the device. It is a fast, clean, efficient and repeatable process, ideal for joining just about any set of plastic parts in many applications, from simple structural bonds to more complex hermetic seals.

This latest machine is very accurate in operation, equipped with PLC which controls electronic and pneumatic operations, achieving excellent repeatability between cycles. Therefore having set the machine for a particular component, there’s no need to thereafter interfere or reset for that item as all of the variable settings are stored, which in turn equates to valuable savings on setup times.

TCB-Arrow were recently approached with an ultrasonic welding enquiry where the client was sourcing finished welded product through a Far East supplier, but due to ongoing quality concerns they felt there was a need to transfer the welding process of the product to a local UK supplier in an attempt to establish an improved level of quality control for their finished product.

The product itself consists of a PC/ABS upper and lower case containing a sealed RFID tag system. The specification stipulated was that the finished cases are manufactured, sealed and validated to an IP68 rating.

TCB-Arrow took onboard the client’s comments and concerns with their current supplier’s crude air tight validation process of submerging the parts in a water tank at a set depth over a prolonged period. This was followed by deconstructing the cases for visual inspection of water ingress, which deemed the cases to be inadequate to qualify the rating.

With these points in mind we developed an efficient and repeatable new style of pressure test, where a live push-in style, pneumatic connector fitting is threaded into the underside of the lower case. The welded unit is then submerged in a water tank and pressure tested for leaks incrementally, utilizing a regulating pressure gauge to a calculated acceptable internal pressure reading of 0.5Bar, then beyond to the point of destruction periodically throughout a 5k production run. Using this new method, accurate pressure test results were obtained and recorded as real time SPC data during the manufacturing process, bringing the test in line with industry standard methodology.

This technique of validating and testing the welded cases level of Hermetic seal has proved to be far more efficient and controllable than our clients previous test, in fact since introducing the new test a 100% pass rate has been recorded for all RFID tagged cases now ultrasonically welded by TCB-Arrow.