Bill Buchholz, Electronic coordinator
    C.C.L. Container, Hermitage, Pennsylvania

C.C.L. Container manufactures seamless aerosol cans for a variety of retail products brands. Although some extrusion and palletizing equipment in the plant is only 10 years old, its software is obsolete and the repair facilities no longer support the old electronic drives. This adds to the challenges Bill Buchholz, lead electronics coordinator, faces in keeping it all running. Bill’s current project is to eliminate the obsolete drives and replace them with new equipment and controllers. For this project, Bill has been involved in product specification, and he does schematic diagramming and installation of the new components.

The project involves the can bundling and packaging processes at the end of the assembly line. These operations involve a series of synchronous motors to group cans in hexagonal bundles that are then palletized and shipped out to be filled.

After raw aluminum slugs are punched into cylinders, they are trimmed and sent to a bathing process that eliminates extrusion greases and dust. The cans then receive a spray lacquer finish on the inside so the customer’s product does not react with the aluminum.

Next comes outside lithography and finally a clear lacquer finish. The final process gives the finished can a “neck” so the filler can put a spray top or a screw top onto it after it has been filled with product.

After the “neck-on” process, cans have to be formed into roughly hexagonal bundles for loading on pallets.

“This project is going to save the company tens of thousands of dollars,” says Angelo Garofali, stores technician.

“The new drives and controllers have fewer mechanical parts than their earlier versions, and so we will also save money and storage space by inventorying fewer replacement parts.”

Although this project will improve efficiency and save the company thousands of dollars in downtime and lost production, Garofali notes that it is merely the most recent of many continuous improvement projects that Bill Buchholz has helped execute up and down the company’s production lines.

This article appeared in the December 2007/January 2008 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright 2007.

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