Date of Award

2005

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

College of Technology

Abstract

Scrap products caused by poor fusion in the cast-on-strap manufacturing process has become a major problem in a North American battery (NAB) plant. At present, the management is searching for ways to eliminate the high rate of scrap and to minimize the cost of materials and overtime labor used for rework. Such rework contributes to the high cost of their final product. The effects of scrap on quality and cost of the final products were part of the reason why the plant is loosing its competitive edge in the global market. The goal of this research was to determine the effects of temperature and flux level on the scraps produced in the cast-on-strap process in a North American battery plant. The Taguchi Design Of Experiment (DOE) method was used in the research to identify the settings of design parameters at which the effect of noise factors on the performance characteristics was minimum. The experiment was performed using Taguchi's L8 (3 x 2) orthogonal arrays, which provided all possible combination of the levels of factors in 8 experimental runs. The analysis of the data was performed using theEducational version of Stat-Ease's Design of Experiment software. The result of the study indicated that some settings in the levels of temperature and flux showed significant effects on fusion in the cast-on-strap manufacturing process. There was also an indication that the flux level was the most significant of all the three factors used in the experiment. The mold temperature was the next significant, while the hot-cut temperature showed the least significant effect. From the result of the experiment, it was concluded that a good cast-on-strap fusion was produced at the temperature values of 975°F at the hot-cut, 275°F at the mold and a flux level at 0.375 inches high.

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