Design and build a turnkey special machine for drivetrain components to check male spline for circlip presence, hydraulically press male and female spline shaft assemblies together, and check assembly via pull test.

• Load female spline assembly horizontally into nesting fixture
• Place male assembly into circlip tooling to check presence of clip via laser distance sensor
• Load male assembly into fixture and manually align splines
• Operator leaves light curtain protected area and presses cycle start button to start machine
• Two pneumatic cylinders extend to clamp part in tooling
• Hydraulic cylinder extends to press assembly together
• Cylinder extended sensors confirm press and linear readout records correct press distance
• Pneumatic cylinder retracts for pull test
• If linear readout records the assembly does not retract past the set point the circlip is confirmed in position, machine returns home, and part is loaded onto staging chute for next operation
• If readout extends past set point the machine will stop and require the operator or supervisor to manually reset machine with key switch, remove assembly, and deposit in rework chute.

Sample parts were provided by the customer and the machine was tested in our Franklin, Indiana facility and ready for customer inspection within three days of machine completion. A four hour run off with the customer was performed and the machine was accepted.

Final production increased and quality was improved for the customer due to minimizing human error as well as the option of retaining data for each assembly produced.

Overton Carbide successfully designed and built a quality machine which exceeded the customer expectations and was within their budget.