India’s automotive industry manufactures around 26 million motor vehicles per year and 4.7 million of them are exported worldwide. As the industry continues to grow, two manufacturers have found a new way to improve the quality and efficiency of parts and end products.
Kleenoil Filtration India Pvt Ltd, a supplier of industrial oil and coolant filters in the Indian subcontinent, is supplying Micromag filters from UK manufacturer Eclipse Magnetics to many of India’s biggest manufacturers, including Sansera Engineering Ltd and Hero Motocorp.
Based in Karnataka, Sansera is an engineering-led integrated manufacturer of complex and high-quality precision components for the automotive and aerospace sectors, supplying to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in India and around the world.
Filter problems Working primarily with cast iron, Sansera relies heavily on its grinding machine to ensure parts, such as connecting rods, shafts, and gear shifter forks, are both precise and accurate. The company was previously using a paper band filter which meant that the trapping of particulates was proving to be ineffective to maintain the high level of quality expected by its customers.
The saturated cleaning fluids led to a noticeable reduction in grinding wheel life, as well as a poor surface finish, causing an excessive number of rejects that needed to be reworked. Fluid lifespan was also proving an issue, and environmental factors posed a problem with the need to dispose of contaminated waste, all of which led to the search for a more effective method to solve the problem.
Kleenoil installed an Eclipse Magnetics’ Micromag high-performance filtration system inline before the machine’s pump to minimise the number of ferrous particles contacting the grinding wheel. Containing a high-intensity magnetic circuit, the Micromag filter removes a high-proportion of ferrous contamination, including the finest of particles, without the need to regularly replace consumable media filters, or having adverse effects on fluid properties.
How it works Contaminated fluid enters the inlet port where it is dispersed by the tapered radial flow channels. Fluid passes down the outside of the centrally mounted rare earth magnetic core which captures contamination particles along its length, resulting in high levels of filtration efficiency.
The geometry of the magnetic flux circuit means that contamination builds up in a controlled way, ensuring that the filter can never block, irrespective of how much contamination is held. Channels remain open, allowing fluid to continue to flow freely.
The filtered fluid flows through the return slots located in the upper section of the magnetic core, down through the centre and exits through the outlet port. The unit is cleaned simply and quickly with a cleaning tool and a fully contaminated core can be cleaned in under 30 seconds. Only metallic particles are removed from the filter and these can be easily disposed.
Following the installation, Sansera was able to maintain its production volume whilst also seeing a significant extension in the overall life of grinding wheels, boosting the tool life efficiency by 250%. The Micromag also vastly improved reject rates. The cleaner fluids enabled better contact between the grinding wheel and the part, which enhanced the surface finish consistency with improved Ra values. The number of parts failing quality inspection fell by 90%, resulting in significant monthly savings in scrappage or rework. The combined benefits of longer grinding wheel life and fewer rejects enabled Sansera to recover its investment costs within just seven months of the Micromag installation.
Machinery efficiency Similarly, Hero Motocorp was looking for ways to improve the efficiency of its machinery and began to investigate an effective solution for cleaning the cutting oil of its valve seat chamfering machine. Both valves and seats play an integral role in the performance, compression, and longevity of engines, therefore it is imperative that the chamfering of the valve seats is highly accurate and of high quality.
The company, which is headquartered in New Delhi, has been at the forefront of designing and developing technologically advanced motorcycles and scooters for its customers around the world and, with the help of Kleenoil, installed a Micromag MM10 in-line with its chamfering machine, located after the clean tank between the pump and the flow back to process.
Within the first month of having the Micromag installed, Hero Motocorp recorded an impressive 26.67% improvement in tool life, as well as a marked improvement in both surface finish and quality. It was also reported that approximately 0.265 kg of contamination was collected every three days during the cleaning process, indicating that the filter is capturing around 88 g of ferrous material each day from the chamfering machine alone.
Director of Sales at Kleenoil, Ankrish Kapur, said: “The Micromags are very successful with the Tier 1 suppliers in India. The stringent quality checks that the OEMs place on the Tier 1 suppliers after the introduction of the BS 6 engines has caused the manufacturers to focus a lot more on their quality and finish. The fact that the Micromags are a one-time investment and give a quick ROI to the customer provides noticeable cost savings to their company as well.”
The easy-clean design of the Micromag has also brought a reduction in machine downtime as it takes just 30 seconds to clean a fully contaminated core. Environmental benefits are also clear in the MicroMag MM10’s results, as it eliminates the need for disposable filters which reduces the overall environmental impact of the machine.
