Bombardier Recreational Products is an international manufacturer of snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles including Ski-doo snowmobiles and Sea-doo watercraft. Bombardier was having problems with high reject rates and tool breakage on a gun drilling operation producing cast iron piston bushings. Abrasive ferrous particles were being circulated in coolant fluids which were causing tool breakage and surface damage to the bushings. The resultant costs were considerable in drill replacements, product rejects and downtime. The process already had a traditional barrier filtration system but it could only remove particles down to 20 micron size, while anything smaller was re-circulated.
Eclipse Magnetics installed its Filtramag system, which can remove small ferrous particles down to sub-micron size. As a result, reject rates and tool changes caused by ferrous contamination fell to virtually zero and the unit is easily to install with minimal modification to existing processes. Bombardier has now installed Filtramag 1.5 units on each of 16 gun drilling and milling machines on site.
