Process Reliability And System Availability Process reliability and system availability for automotive suppliers

HYDAC – your partner for complex components and systems for maximum system availability.

Process reliability and system availability for automotive suppliersHYDAC – your partner for complex components and systems for maximum system availability.

Automotive suppliers find themselves confronted with industry-specific challenges that make enormous demands on production. These demands are also driven by trends that are setting new standards in the industry across the entire sector: these include maximum process reliability in production, which can only be achieved with optimum system availability.

In the case of petrol injection systems, for example, high-precision production is needed to ensure the cleanliness of both the products and the machining fluids.

As an experienced technology partner, HYDAC was asked to implement its industry know-how in a perfectly tailored solution for the customer.

Increasing system availability by using high-efficiency cooling-filter units from HYDAC Fluid Engineering

One of our MRO customers, a leading manufacturer of petrol injection systems for cars, was experiencing the problem of inadequate cooling power in test benches, which manifested itself in frequent test bench failure.

The failures were caused by excess test fluid temperature, which radiated into the assembly and test bench area and heated up the clean rooms. Installed compressor coolers were not able to provide the required cooling power and additionally warmed up the clean room in the assembly and test line. In turn, this led to increased cooling requirements in the assembly and test line. The most energy-efficient cooling method was to use the existing cooling water circuit.

Furthermore, particulate contamination in the system led to elevated wear in the servo-valves used – and thus to high repair costs. The test media were also contaminated to a degree, which caused valve failure in the test benches.

It was with these problems, which severely impacted process reliability and system availability, that the customer approached HYDAC to develop a proposed solution.

The task included several goals to address the complicated problems: first, the cooling power needed to be adjusted to suit the test benches so that the required reliable temperature could be achieved. The heat dissipation into the production area also needed to be reduced, and the use of coolants was to be avoided to reduce maintenance and disposal costs. At the same time, significant amounts of energy needed to be saved – at least 30%. It was also important for the adjusted cooling solution to not take up too much space in the production area.

To increase the system availability, an efficient filtration solution needed to be realised that would reduce the particulate load in the test benches. Finally, the total workload and costs for repair and maintenance needed to be reduced.

As the customer had already come to trust HYDAC’s expertise, there was continuous contact. Using this as a foundation, our experts first obtained an accurate picture of the situation with on-site visits, consumption measurements and analysis of fluid samples. They were able to draw on their valuable technical experience in production and test-bench processes in the production of injection systems.

The solution from HYDAC Fluid Engineering: permanent cooling-filter unit in the bypass connected to the tank with clean and contaminated side

The new cooling-filter unit that we realised was implemented in all of the customer’s test benches. Using HYDAC Flexmicron premium technology with a filtration rating of 1µm, it was possible to fulfil or even exceed all of the above-mentioned requirements.

With the modification of the cooling system with multiple cooling compressors to a water-cooled system for each test bench, proportional and continuously adjustable closed-loop control of the required cooling water volume was possible with a thermostatically controlled cooling water valve and plate heat exchanger, enabling constant temperature of the test medium – reliably, throughout the entire year and with an effective energy saving of roughly 40%.

The result

We optimised the structure of the cooling system so that it took up less room in the production hall. We reduced downtime of hydraulic components, such as servo-valves and high-pressure pump, by as much as 40% thanks to the new cooling-filter unit. With this highly efficient filtration, downtime costs were reduced by roughly 50%. Ultimately, lowering the particulate load also reduced the workload and costs for repair and maintenance by half.

Thanks to the HYDAC system consultation and product development from a single source, our customer was able to save further costs.

Your advantages at a glance:

Reliability

Process reliability

The specified temperature of the test medium was maintained throughout the entire year.

System availability

System availability

The overall system availability was increased by 2%.

Machine failure

Machine failure

The highly efficient filtration solution significantly reduced the number of machine failures.

Reducing costs

Reduction of costs

The reduced particulate load considerably lowered the costs for maintenance and repair.

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