FLAT SPRING

Automobile manufacturers had an urgent need to reduce the cost of procured parts.

Customers are heavy electric manufacturers based in the Tohoku region. The trigger is cost reduction. Customers were asked to make estimates when they were forced to review parts procurement. The designated product is a two-use leaf spring of similar shape to the right and left used for the radiator motor of an automobile. It was the request after feeling the limit in the cost management ability of the competing spring manufacturer who had requested the manufacture of the similar product until then.

• Prototype processing technology
• Conceptual and technological capabilities
• In-house made forming machine

Advanex decided to adopt processing by forming machines against the processing by competitors’ press machines until then. In terms of the two advantages of the forming machine:

① to save material costs by reducing waste of material ingestion;
② to allow compression of mold costs by being able to accommodate type 1 and similarly shaped items on the left and right side through part change;
the presentation presented that the unit cost and the cost of gold can be drastically reduced, and the mutual estimation by the materials and parts was winned.

However, the forming process was the first time for the customer, and he felt anxiety. This paper explains the outline of forming by showing moving pictures and photographs with a technician in charge of sales. The company itself draws a manga picture to explain the mechanism of material cost compression, etc., and wins the reliability of the customer engineer of the theorist skin. After that, the factory smoothly shifted to the prototype stage, and at the timing of the process audit in which fine dimension adjustment was completed and the dies were completed, the quality manager of the customer visited the Kashiwazaki Plant and made final adjustments with the quality engineer of Advanex, leading to mass production. The first customer to look at a forming machine at a factory, surprised at the facilities and management system. Advanex is becoming more trustworthy, and other products are being developed.