Steel Manufacturing

Customer
Manufacturer of Tube Products

Application
Exhaust Manifold Tubing Extensions

Background
This company is a manufacturer of tubing components and a major "tier-one" automotive supplier. With three (3) factories located in the mid-west, they employ nearly 5,000 workers.

This application involves an exhaust manifold tubing extension for the Cadillac Northstar engines. Originally, these tubes were not cleaned before installation on a new car. However, after many cars were returned to the dealer for an oxygen sensor malfunction, Cadillac investigated the reason for the high number of warranty returns. They discovered that the particulate (light machining oils, coolant, dust & welding splatter) left in the exhaust tubes was creating errors to the oxygen sensor of the car.

Problem
The inside of the manifold tubes had to be cleaned to eliminate this expensive warranty issue. The company, however, was not prepared to do the cleaning in-house, so they began outsourcing them. The vendor manually cleaned them using a high pressure water blasting method, which was time consuming and expensive. To alleviate this expense, the company wanted the cleaning process performed in house. To do so, the system had to be capable of the following: a) clean only the inside of the exhaust tubes (insulation was on the outside and if it got wet the part would be ruined), b) completely dry the inside of the tubes, c) able to clean nine (9) tubes at a time in one automatic cycle, d) ergonomically easy to load and unload.

Solution
Design a machine with customized fixturing capable of washing and drying only the inside of the tubes. This fixture was designed to hold five tubes on the bottom and four tubes on the top. Inside the door there are two (2) air distribution boxes with round air outlet holes. The wash plumbing runs inside the air boxes to feed spray nozzles in the center of each air outlet. When the machine door is closed, the tube fixture is automatically pushed forward so the upper tube ends seal against the air/water distribution boxes. The result is that the tube I.D.ís are washed and dried without getting the outside surfaces wet. Mission accomplished.

System
A completely insulated F-4000-P with a customized tube flushing fixture and the following options: a 10 hp regenerative blower, a 150 GPM wash pump. . . 15 GPM flushing action per tube, a heating element upgrade to 24 kW , an in-line filter system, an automatic steam exhaust, a door lock switch, and a filter pressure switch which will notify the operator when the filter needs to be changed.

6/24/98