Elite supports customers in rethinking their production and logistics processes in order to minimize no added-value operations and to streamline their production flows.
For example, our team can assist in creating flow standards in accordance with the principles of the pull system to minimize inventory, production time and market delivery times. In this context, Elite can support in:
ü definition of the main material flows;
ü verification and sizing of any shared operation;
ü relative calculation of optimal loop time and intermediate buffers;
ü balancing production capacities;
ü identification of a single bottleneck.
We also support the application of Value Stream Mapping (VSM) to eliminate or to minimize no added-value activities. Attacking waste, simplifying, standardizing, motivating and innovating are the main daily activities in a leading company, to be implemented through continuous and repeated mini-projects in the field (kaizen), to be understood as moments of teaching and experimentation, fundamental tools for the implementation of a real process of continuous improvement and involvement of all staff.
Being lean means learning how to do the same things with less resources (people, tools, materials, money, energy, etc.) or do more things with the same resources. Becoming lean means constantly increasing productivity (of labor, machinery, money, energy, etc.) through a virtuous mix of know-how and motivation. This is what we aim to do together with our customers.
Examples of achievements of technical consulting services of Elite offered to both bearings and bearing components manufacturers are here listed:
· Optimization of bearings production line Operative Efficiency
· Reduction of bottle-neck cycle time (e.g. to less than 1 second per ring in grinding) 
· Increase of Manpower Productivity (kgs/manhour) (from +200% to +1000%)
· Reliable and Stable Manufacturing Process of bearings for noise sensitive applications
· Reduction of Manufacturing Through-Put Time (from -50% to -95%)
· Metallurgical optimization of bearings components for longer resistance to fatigue and wear.
Here below two real examples of implementation of such Elite approach to the balls industry.
High Precision Steel Balls Flashing Optimization
In high-precision steel balls manufacturing flashing operation is the process performed immediately after pressing and before heat treatment, aimed to make the ball shape round and adapt for the following stock removal steps of process (grinding and lapping). For its nature, flashing is the most aggressive operation in steel balls manufacturing process: it is energy-intensive operation and at risk of generating defects that will may remain till finished products stage.
Engineers of Elite are able to assist steel balls manufacturers to:
ü Cut of more than 50% the electrical energy consumption in flashing per kg of produced balls;
ü Reduce drastically the machine time of operation;
ü Reduce the cast iron wheel speed, with benefits in terms of reduced machine vibrations and tooling wear;
ü Reduce of more than 25% the tooling purchasing cost;
ü Minimize the part per million defects of lack of material due to flashing.
All the above benefits – already achieved within some of the best international companies of the industry – can bring the high precision steel balls manufacturers to revolutionize their whole process, with also great benefits in the following grinding operation both in terms of quality and cost.
Silicon Nitride Balls Lapping without usage of diamond powder
The Si3N4 balls reach very high values of hardness in order to comply with the strict international requirements of ATSM F2094 norm and the geometrical requirements of ISO 3290 specification. For this reason, practically every company who manufacture these balls uses fine powder of diamond (with 1 µm or smaller average particles diameter) to have stock removal in 1st and 2nd lapping operation and to get the two desired results:
1. Get the desired geometrical precision of the quality grade;
2. Remove proper stock allowance, improving the roughness (Ra) of balls surface.
The reason for such process choice is linked to the hardness properties of diamond that can compete with sintered silicon nitride hardness. However, such type of process has at least two important drawbacks:
· The risk to generate micro-cracks on the silicon nitride surface, often not visible by naked eyes, that might enlarge themselves in the application generating dangerous and sudden failures;
· The very long machine cycles in lapping, required to remove even few microns of material on ball diameter, so impacting negatively on the process costs of such ceramic balls.
Elite engineers have developed in the past years a unique technology to lap the silicon nitride balls without usage of diamond powder.
Through the usage of a lapping process similar in many aspects to the standard new technology for lapping high precision steel balls by bakelite wheels, the new process can guarantee to bypass the above-described drawbacks of diamond lapping.
The most important benefit is NOT to have any risk of micro-cracks generated by lapping operations, therefore there is no need of expensive and slow sorting processes through magnetic penetrant liquid inspections and/or by complex and slow ultrasonic samples inspections. Also, the stock removal rate is faster than in the case of traditional diamond powder process.
In principle, the concepts at the base of such alternative lapping of Si3N4 balls might be applicable also to the ceramic balls second grinding operation, after proper testing of the right tooling and machine parameters set-up. Elite engineers are available to support also research in that direction.
Elite can provide such know-how to the ceramic balls manufacturers interested to differentiate their products in a technological mature market of Si3N4 balls for bearings.
