Every manufacturer worth their salt wants to do thing better, faster, and more efficiently. Whether it’s a matter of pride or of survival as a company, the drive to constantly improve is what keeps manufacturers sharp.
One key method to improving manufacturing processes that might get overlooked is improving the parts washing and materials handling containers used in your manufacturing process.
For many manufacturers, the right custom wire basket can mean faster, more efficient manufacturing with less waste and rejections. Providing the right custom steel wire basket to meet your manufacturing needs is something that Marlin Steel specializes in.
How can a Marlin Steel custom wire basket improve your manufacturing?
Here are a few ways:
1: Reducing Damage to Delicate Parts
One of the most frequent reasons for rejecting a part is damage to the surface of that part. It almost doesn’t matter how well-engineered the part is or how accurately it’s assembled if the part gets dented or scratched by the very container meant to protect it through your production process.
Often, such damage is the result of a poorly-designed basket, one that wasn’t designed with your parts or processes in mind.
Marlin’s custom steel wire baskets reduce damage to parts by taking into account the demands of your parts and processes in every step of their design. Marlin’s engineers will tweak the design elements used in a basket design to minimize the risk of the basket damaging parts during your parts finishing processes.
This means fewer parts needing to be reprocessed or remanufactured in each parts load, saving you time, labor, and money.
2: Enabling Faster Processing of Parts
Sometimes, stock baskets aren’t exactly designed with convenience or ease of use in mind. The harder it is to load, unload, and move a basket, the slower your manufacturing line moves.
Marlin can design a custom parts cleaning or handling basket that speeds up parts processing tasks in two ways:
- Increasing Ease of Handling. By adding easy to manipulate handholds and making parts simple to place or remove from the basket, Marlin’s custom wire containers can shorten task times for moving parts.
- Reducing Basket Swapping. Most stock baskets are designed for compatibility with a single parts finishing machine, and will not work in another; requiring you to move parts between multiple baskets throughout your process. Custom baskets, however, can be designed with multiple processes in mind, eliminating the need to constantly switch parts between baskets. This can save a significant amount of time and labor, not to mention reducing the risk of damage from mishandling parts.
By speeding up the processing of parts, a Marlin Steel custom wire basket can help make your manufacturing faster and more efficient.
LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW MARLIN HELPS SAVE MANUFACTURERS TIME, MONEY, AND LABOR!
3: Preventing Damage to Parts Finishing Equipment
Another grave concern in any manufacturing process is the protection of any specialized equipment you use. When parts fall out of a basket, they can get caught in the machinery of your finishing equipment, causing damage to both.
For example, a part that floats free during an ultrasonic wash cycle may come into contact with the ultrasonic transducers used in that process, causing damage and limiting (or disabling) the functionality of the machine until they’re repaired.
This creates work delays and stoppages that can cripple manufacturing operations.
A well-engineered custom basket circumvents this issue by securely holding parts throughout your finishing processes. This keeps parts from getting stuck in machinery and causing damage.
4: Speeding Up Part Drying
While it’s important to make sure that parts cannot fall out of a basket, it’s also important to make sure that any parts cleaning baskets are sufficiently ventilated to allow the runoff of your finishing processes to leave the basket quickly and efficiently.
Marlin’s engineers balance the need for strong, secure basket frames with the need for open space between individual wires on every basket design. This way, parts will stay in place while the runoff of your cleaning process drains away quickly and efficiently, reducing the time that parts have to spend drying.
It might sound odd, but sometimes, getting the right basket can do a lot to make your manufacturing process faster and more efficient. In fact, Marlin’s custom steel wire baskets are trusted by companies across the globe to help improve process efficiency.