Higher-priced plastic saves total cost
By Staff -- Purchasing, 11/19/1998
Lately top purchasing professionals have been zeroing in on total cost, not purchase price. Many times they have found that paying a higher price for a part, component, or material can result in lower total cost.Such was the case when manufacturer ABB changed its design of an encapsulated voltage coil. The old design was overmolded with thermoset epoxy. ABB began to use DuPont's Zytel nylon resin, an engineering thermoplastic. DuPont engineers suggested some other design changes to the manufacturing process that now provides more output with less labor than the thermoset molding process previously used.
Russell Broome, ABB project engineer, credits DuPont's Tom Boyer with helping ABB through the design process. "He provided invaluable help at every stage of the development process," says Broome. "He made recommendations involving resin grades, the design of parts and molds, and requirements for molding equipment and process controls. He also played a key role in helping us optimize process parameters for quality and productivity," Broome adds.
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