Metal-Cored Wire Offers Process Improvements to Manufacturer
Webster Industries has been able to improve throughput, reduce scrap rates and simplify inventory due to the efficiencies metal-cored wire provides. The company standardized on Hobart® FabCOR® 86R wire in the same diameter throughout many of its welding operations. This allowed Webster Industries to reduce part numbers in their stock, along with inventory management, and spend more time focused on productivity improvements. Being able to weld through mill scale furthers efficiencies — welders can work faster by eliminating pre- and post-weld cleaning of parts.
Video Transcript
We’ve been in business for over 140 years. We actually started in 1876. We are primarily an employee-owned manufacturer of conveying equipment, engineering class chains, and vibratory conveyors. We serve a whole host of industries by design, and two of the biggest markets are the forest products industry and the grain handling industry. We not only do fabrication and welding, we also do machining and heat treat. We are also a foundry operation, so we have a whole host of different manufacturing processes that we continue to advance and improve on.
Some of the challenges we had been facing in our welding department were quality, weld penetration, and just overall cleanliness of the welds. When we went to metal core, we really didn’t experience any issues with the equipment, just minor adjustments for feed rates. The response from our welders has been very good; it’s actually made their jobs somewhat easier. The benefits of the Fab Core 86R are that it burns a lot cleaner and it can burn through any oil, mill scale, or things of that sort.
With the metal core wire, there does tend to be a whole lot less rework because of the fact that we don’t deal with a lot of the spatter. We don’t deal with kinked wires or things along that line. It’s a better quality wire. We’ve been looking at anywhere from 18 to 20% efficiency improvements in our welding operations. We have reduced our costs as far as rework.
Being able to standardize with the 86R wire and using a standard size throughout the facility makes for less inventory and less overhead. The partnership that we have with Hobart has been excellent. Anytime we have any issues, we make a phone call, and if we don’t reach the representative at that moment, we get a phone call back that day. They go down to the shop floor, talk to the operators directly, answer operators’ questions and concerns, and point out things to the operators, the people that are actually doing the work and adding the value to Webster’s products. And that’s pretty big.