CoPilot® is the latest monitoring system in the injection molding industry. It can help you reduce costs in the following 7 ways.
1.Save Time
As the saying goes, time is money. CoPilot® can help you save costs in different ways. Two of them are automatic sorting of defective parts and reducing machine downtime.
Automatic Sorting of Parts: Detects defective parts before the mold opens and automatically sorts them based on cavity conditions, replacing the time-consuming manual sorting process. Automation also reduces the likelihood of human errors, greatly lowering the risk of defective products being delivered to customers.
Reduce Machine Downtime:CoPilot® can quickly identify and resolve issues in the molding process. When the process does not match the template, a corresponding prompt appears on the large purple screen, allowing you to know the current issue with the machine immediately and quickly restart it.
Sometimes all machine settings meet standards, but the parts do not fully comply with requirements. At this point, CoPilot®’s cavity pressure template matching function plays a significant role. By monitoring cavity pressure, it can quickly adjust the cavity pressure to optimal conditions.
2.Reduce Scrap
The generation of defective products is a massive waste of materials, time, and money. In contrast, reducing defects can increase profit margins. CoPilot® helps achieve this by preventing a large number of defects and monitoring viscosity changes.
Eliminate Large Numbers of Defective Products: The screen immediately informs you when the machine starts producing defective products. When a large red screen starts displaying that the machine is producing defective products, staff cannot miss this information, meaning they can stop losses before producing a large quantity of unqualified parts.
Control the Process: When paired with cavity pressure sensors, CoPilot® can control process settings. This makes segmented molding processes possible, thereby improving overall part quality.
Monitor Viscosity Changes: Whenever you update a batch number or material, viscosity may change. CoPilot® can effectively monitor viscosity and set alerts to notify technicians, avoiding spending a lot of time searching for the cause of the changes.
Clarify Size Specifications:: Correlate process variables (such as cavity pressure) with part dimensions. This allows you to clearly determine whether part specifications meet requirements.
Monitor Water Temperature: CoPilot® is compatible with Burger & Brown flow meters, allowing you to be informed of water flow speed and temperature at the first moment, further preventing the generation of defective products and machine downtime.
3.Increase Product Traceability
A significant advantage of CoPilot® is the ability to track parts produced and transported. This data can be used for audits, retracing past successful cycles for reuse, and seeing when processes were changed, etc.
Establish Audit Trails: Record and store cycle data; process data from months ago can be retrieved and verified during fault investigations. You can see when, how, and by whom past process changes were made and compare the current cycle with past cycles. All of this can be done with just a click of a button, eliminating the need for manual machine audits.
Reduce Risks: If parts fail, especially in medical components, the consequences can be severe. Therefore, minimizing the risk of product returns is of considerable value.
Complete Part Sampling: You can easily monitor quality and sample grouping on CoPilot®, while saving a series of operational traces in Hub®. You can also input CTQ and associate them with specific parts, then match these parts with process data. These methods provide full traceability and continuity from production to quality.
4.Reduce Paper Costs
Many automotive and medical companies must record their process settings because their customers or regulatory bodies require these data to be preserved at specific frequencies, whether by shift, day, or batch. Recording process settings is a non-value-added activity, meaning the company does not reward employees for recording process settings. Typically, employees are unable to engage in other more valuable work due to this requirement. Even when manual records are completed, errors often occur, which greatly reduces the reliability and reference value of these recorded numbers.
No More Manual Input: After using CoPilot®, there is no need for manual recording of processes, as CoPilot® automatically collects all relevant process information for each cycle. These parameters are sent to the Hub® network system for storage. If process settings need to be verified, you can query the corresponding process information at that point in time through Hub®.
If you need to check the cause of a fault, you can also revisit and verify the process settings through Hub®. The data collection from CoPilot® and Hub® systems can significantly reduce the time technicians spend manually handling data.
5.Save and Record Process Adjustments
Process adjustments can be recorded and reviewed in CoPilot® to understand how they have changed over time, why changes occurred, and who caused the changes.
Review How Processes Have Changed: Understanding what changes occurred in the process is the first step in diagnosing how to resolve molding issues. You can see which settings were changed and determine when production of defective parts began, addressing the problem at its root without guessing what happened during the previous night shift.
Review Who Changed the Process: No more guessing who changed your process settings; you will know who made the changes, when they were made, allowing you to track the root cause of the problems and revert the process to its previous state.
6.Quickly Resolve Issues
The faster you resolve issues, the lower the likelihood of waste, and the higher the production efficiency. CoPilot® enables you to quickly find and resolve issues, producing high-quality products.
Match Processes with Templates: Save the process parameters for producing good products and create templates. Once a mismatch between the process and the template is detected, CoPilot® will notify you immediately so you can quickly restore it.
Increase Productivity: By quickly resolving injection molding issues and reducing machine downtime, you can produce more high-quality products in a shorter time. Higher output means more buffer space.
7.Improve Mold Transfer Efficiency
Transferring molds to different machines is not complex and does not require much time. By using the mold transfer program on CoPilot®, you can quickly and easily transfer molds.
Export Machine-Independent Process Templates: The parameters used by CoPilot® are machine-independent, making them applicable across different machines and obtaining correct plastic parameters without trial-and-error testing. Templates are created based on molds rather than machines and can be input into both the machine and CoPilot®, allowing for quick setup of processes.
Achieve Perfect Products on the First Shot: By establishing and validating processes in advance, you can achieve perfect products on the first shot without adjustments or technical checks.
Conclusion
CoPilot® can save you a significant amount of time and costs. More importantly, it ensures that the products delivered to customers are flawless.
To learn how to better utilize CoPilot®, click here to participate in our free online CoPilot® training course.