Match-Well achieves 30% time gain and zero rejection in die casting

End Customer
Match-Well Die Casters

Industry
Manufacturing

Challenge
To improve Die Cast quality so as to nullify final product rejections by OEM clients and achieve multi-cavity mass production capabilities

Altair Solution

• Use Altair Inspire CAST for simulation and reduce rejection percentage of Die Casting
• Use Altair Inspire CASTto achieve highly accurate and speedy results during product development cycle

Benefits

• Achieved zero rejection of Casting
• Achieved multi-cavity mass production
• Achieved 30 percent time and cost saving
• Reduced product development cycle time and cost with increased product quality

Match-Well Die Casters started small in 1994 with a vision of manufacturing superior quality high-pressure Die Cast components in Aluminium and Zinc-based alloys. Over the years, the company grew exponentially and started providing complete Die Casting solutions from its four state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Chakan (Pune), Bhandup (Mumbai), and Mahape and Koparkhairne (Navi Mumbai). The company has created a name for itself amongst its customers for manufacturing Die Casting Dies, Die Cast finished, semi-finished, and unfinished components in Aluminium and Zinc alloys at a competitive price that matches their expectations.

Match-Well now boasts of world-class in-house facilities such as tool manufacturing, tool production, Die Casting parts production, post operations, assembly and sub-assessment and supply to customers’ production lines. With every passing year, the company has enriched its wherewithal and expanded its portfolio with added manufacturing services. Currently its gamut includes Die Designing, Die Manufacturing, High-pressure Die Casting, Deburring, Vibro and Leak Testing, Machining, Surface Treatment, and Component Assembly. Match-Well’s growth necessitated the company to move beyond Maharashtra and hence it expanded its operations to other parts of the country such as Gujarat, Karnataka, West Bengal, Uttaranchal, and Silvassa. The company ascribes their continued growth to the unwavering commitment of their 250+ team members who are now highly experienced professionals in their respective areas of expertise. The team has tirelessly worked to acquire OEM clients from various industry domains such as Automotive, Electrical, Pneumatic, Hydraulic, Industrial, Hardware, LED Light manufacturing and so on. The company’s clients have recognised the Match-Well team with many prestigious awards that stand testimony to their continuous commitment to production excellence and customer service.

The Challenge

As a Standard operating procedure, the Match-Well team receives developed parts from their clients. The clients expect the team to design and develop tools to manufacture the required components. As the team mainly deals with High-pressure Die Cast manufacturing, facing challenges is a part and parcel of their daily chore . A unique challenge the team faced was in the area of Repeat Die Casting, that is, using the same die for repetitive tasks and getting maximum products in one go.

The team relied on outsourced simulation services—that used Magma—for product development and initially outsourced their entire design requirements. This arrangement posed many challenges on their way toward product design and manufacturing excellence. Many technical issues such as non-filling of Casting, porosity of Die Casting, porosity after machining, air entrapment, shrinkage porosity, presence of cracks due to late cooling, filling of multi-cavities, and multi-cavity tool generation kept the team on their toes. The team wanted to find immediate and focused solutions for these nagging issues as those were the primary reasons of Die rejection by clients. When the rejection percentage reached a high threshold, the Match-Well team decided to go in for in-house simulation software.

Also, because the team worked on products that were completely market-oriented, they wanted to keep their production cost to a minimum as it was a crucial aspect related to survival in a very competitive market. As they wanted to use the latest technology and world-class simulation software that could help them with solutions to achieve volume production, they chose Altair Inspire CAST as it promised to fulfil all their specific requirements.

Solution Provided

The primary objective of the team was to do away with the lacunae that crept in their products, which resulted in Die Casting rejections by clients owing to failed quality parameters. The team also wanted to improve their product development cycle time and mass production capabilities to maintain competitive pricing. With the inception of Altair Inspire CAST as their primary casting simulation tool, the team immediately felt empowered to tackle all challenges with ease. The team found the stepwise process of Inspire CAST implementation much easier as it supported native files from SolidWorks. This enabled them to simulate various test cases at will for moulds and achieve the desired results in terms of quality. With Inspire CAST, the team could easily identify casting defects such as air entrapment, cold shuts, turbulence, and shrinkage porosity in just a few clicks and maximize product quality.

Also, as the team was now able to build tool prototypes and perform mould flow analysis in-house, they generated optimized multi-cavity designs. Earlier, they could manage Dies having only 3 to 4 cavities; but with Inspire CAST, the team challenged themselves with 6 to 8 cavity Dies. This enabled them to provide multiple options to their clients, who selected the best that served their respective purposes.

Inspire CAST also enabled the team to control the injection pressure and validate their designs. This gave the team confidence to share tried and tested molds with customers, along with documented software results as testimony.

“With the help of Altair Solutions we were able to achieve Multi-Cavity mass production and also achieve zero rejection of Casting. We are extremely happy with the overall support received from Altair and DesignTech team. We achieved almost 75% saving in Design Cycle time”, says Nitin Patil – Design Head, Match-Well Die Casters.

The Outcome

The Match-Well team is upbeat about their choice of Altair Inspire CAST as the simulation tool because it helped them to achieve all quality and production parameters. The team achieved zero Die Casting rejection from customers, which was a grave concern for them earlier. With Inspire CAST, they also reduced their new product launch timelines significantly with an impressive time savings of 30 percent. Multi-cavity production enabled by Inspire CAST helped the team in saving 30 percent cost and hence allowed them bandwidth to offer a very competitive pricing to their clients. The team also started getting the manufacturing process results in 30 days, which earlier used to take a staggering 90 days. With the help of Altair Solutions they were able to achieve Multi-Cavity mass production and also achieve zero rejection of Casting. “We are extremely happy with the overall support received from Altair and DesignTech team. The training we received from the DesignTech team helped us in multiple ways. All our queries were resolved with prompt online support by the DesignTech technical team,” states Match-Well.