Hynes Industries approached one of the leading producers of solar panels and mounting systems in the United States and around the world. For years, the company had been producing a mounting system that required three different-sized weld nuts or rivet nuts placed in the 20-foot-long parts. These are expensive and time consuming to put in -- especially on such long sections.
Eventually, their engineers had the idea of extruding a hole where the weld nut would usually go, then tap it. This would eliminate 25 weld nuts and save a lot of money and production time for the company. The supplier of these sections did the conversion from weld nuts to in-line extruding, but not automatic in-line threading. Hynes insisted that in-line threading would save the customer additional money and allow the line to run faster since human labor would no longer be required.
The customer also wanted to establish a Canadian supplier to make parts there as they were receiving orders from the Toronto area. This meant that our Canadian division could help them by producing parts for them in Toronto.
Hynes and Samco Do It Again
Hynes and Samco Solar worked with the customer’s engineers to develop a completely automated process to extrude and thread the holes in line -- no human intervention. The cost was less and the output greater than what the existing supplier was yielding off the machine. This meant that more parts were being produced and shipments could go out with less lead time. Mission accomplished.