Meeting the demand of a booming auto industry

By Pissanuwat Keowamrat

Thailand has been referred to as the "Detroit of Asia," and so far it really is. The country’s economy has been boosted by the automotive industry, and this year, according the Thai Automobile Industry Association (TAIA), auto production is expected to reach 2.2 million units.

 “The urgent issue right now is capacity. This is especially so now that most flood-affected companies have recovered and people are pushing hard to get parts to feed their production. This is happening across the whole supply chain,” said Tanasak Puttal, Production Unit 1& 2 Manager at GKN Driveline (Thailand). The company is an affiliate of GKN Driveline, and it is a BOI promoted company that has been manufacturing CVJ driveshafts for passenger cars for both the domestic and export markets since 1997.” Our principle customers include Toyota, Nissan, GM, Ford and Auto Alliance,” continued Tanasak, whose career in the auto industry expands for more than 20 years from technician right up to the management level today.

With his long experience in machining automotive parts, Tanasak shared with us his experience of machining automotive parts. “What we need in a situation like this is to increase output from a limited amount of machines and people. Having worked with many suppliers we learnt that vendor support in terms of technical expertise and collaboration are very important, especially in the long term. Walter has proved that they are reliable, we are impressed with the technical support that they provide us allowing us to improve our cutting efficiency, our cycle times and reduce machining costs.” said Tanasak.

 “The auto parts industry is very demanding in terms of capacity, capability and specification requirements, and GKN is not excluded,” said Oliver Zimmerer, Walter’s application engineer manager, who has been working closely with GKN Driveline (Thailand) for a number of years. “So it is very important for us to make sure that we are able to deliver a solution that fulfills the customer’s needs, but just as important is to do it at the right time.”

Tanasak further told us that one of the remarkable successes with working with Walter has been with how they increased productivity while reducing cost through the idea of using common indexable inserts. “In the past we used to have as many as 24 item numbers of cutting tools, and now it has become only two items. The day-to-day routine has become much easier because of the far fewer part numbers means less confusion for the operators. It is also a lot easier manage stock as well,” Tanasak added.

Another key productivity improvement was the switch from the NS6 to NMT inserts that has allowed GKN Driveline (Thailand) to increase daily output by 50%. Tanasak explained that before using the NMT insert from the Tiger·tec-WPP series their process encountered problems with chips that were coiled, long and unbroken, and many times these got stuck in the chip conveyor and the operator had to stop the machine to remove them. “That not only reduced output, but also could cause our operators to get injured too.”

 “The chip fracture behaviour of forged and cold-formed components is as problematic as it is for titanium alloys. The tendency to produce coiled swarf is particularly pronounced for materials such as Cf53, C10 and St37. In addition, material removal for forged parts is often only 1.0 to 2.0 mm, which again impedes chip breakage. In order to break the chip reliably and enhance process reliability, optimised cutting edge geometries are necessary. Therefore Walter developed the new NMT geometry,” explained Oliver Zimmerer. “The main feature of the NMT geometry is the curved cutting edge, whose purpose is to reduce the cutting forces and to prevent variations of the workpiece surface when profiling (e.g. ball joints). Close behind is a closed series of dome-shaped bumps which provide an obstacle for the swarf and deflect it, while simultaneously providing a constriction on the overall cutting depth. Additionally, the cutting edge has been drawn up slightly around the corner radius to enable positive geometry conditions at this point.”

Tanasak also mentioned Walter’s Machine Programmer that helps them to increase their efficiency. He explained that, “Given the machine and the product requirements, this programmer can provide us with the proper machining strategies, tool path, feed rate, cutting depth, etc. We get better cycle times and reduced errors and defects.”

Thanks to the help they have received from Walter in boosting their levels productivity, the company will for the first time ever reach a record of producing one million automotive parts in one year, an historic milestone for GKN Thailand. This is something that really puts a smile on his face.

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