Case Study

Business Need

This company has a 40-year history of supplying the industry with custom engineered machine assemblies and precision machined and welded components. The steel component and parts industry continue to receive pressure to reduce cycle time and reduce costs to remain competitive.

Winnebago Manufacturing Company’s Solution

WMC worked side-by-side with our partner to compare the machining of parts that have been stress relieved using our in-house stress relief oven versus parts that did not have stress relief. During the manufacturing process, parts go through an extreme amount of stress. Welding, rolling, machining, cutting or anything that moves metal will cause stress. Stress relieving helps avoid distortion and cracking in the material. For our partner, based on the amount of machining they needed to complete in the heat affected zone of the thermal cut area, the parts that had been stress relieved provided a significant saving of time and tooling expense. 

Results

Our component manufacturing partner achieved an overall 25% reduction in parts costs by stress relieving before machining parts. This is a significant reduction of time and tooling expense. For example, our partner needed to face off both sides, turn the OD and bore the ID of a ring. By stress relieving the ring, our partner did not have to go through the hard zones and wear out tooling. Our in-house oven also saves time and freight costs from outsourcing to another source for stress relieving.