robert henderson

Areas robert henderson is Knowledgeable in:

Techniques robert henderson Uses:

robert henderson's Problem Solving Skills:

1. problem solving
2. creative thinking
3. experience with visual factory applications
4. aluminum casting specialist
5. electromagnetic pump technician
6. data collection and analysis
7. ability to think through problem to solution.

robert henderson's Problem Solving Experience:

1. Problem: Thermocouple wires were often crossed resulting in downtime due to heat loss.
   Color coded and labeled all electrical plugs to make them easily identifyable and visually impossible to improperly connect.
2. Designed templates to streamline my job. Incorporated visual factory applications to make the work area more efficient.
   Wrote Pictorial job instructions for the pump and launder repair process in my workspace and also wrote pictorial job instruction for the Millwrights for use in aligning the equipment in production.
3. Problem: Misalignment occures between 2 pieces of casting equipment and gasket during assembly in a hot furnace.
   Solution: Designed a sacrificial aluminum cone that fits in one piece of equipment and when the equipment is seated it penetrates the gasket and hole in the ceramic of the pump to ensure 100% alignement. When the pump is turned on and molten metal rises it melts the sacrificial cone with it disappearing and the channel left unobstructed for casting.
4. Excessive metal drip during casting causing increased downtime for cleanup of wasted aluminum. Watched the casting process over time and realized that the aluminum was leaking out through one side of the filter screen and gasket that was being used. This gasket was comprised of a piece of wire screen sandwiched between a piece of 1/8" graphite material on one side and a 1/4" thick piece of fibrefrax high temperature blanket on the other side. The aluminum leak was occuring on the graphoil side of the screen.
   Solution: Split the fibrefrax blanket into 2 pieces of 1/8" material. Sandwich the screen between the 2 pieces of fibrefrax with the graphite on the outside. This reduced the leakage 100% with proper alignment. We were able to reduce the aluminum spillage by 1 lb. per casting. At the time we were making close to 1 million castings a year. That is huge savings in waste aluminum and downtime.
5. I am currently an electromagnetic pump build technician working in an aluminum casting facility. Our facility spent one million dollars in the pump room the year before I started on the job. My first goal was to pay for my job through cost savings. The largest waste in the area was our ceramic nozzles that cost $1,000.00 a piece and were used once and thrown away. We used a minimum of 4 nozzles a week. I fugured out a way to repair and reuse these nozzles which immediately saved over $100.000 a year. I then transfered this repair process to other ceramic components resulting in over $250,000 a year cost savings.
6. Extreme nozzle wear.
   Designed an alignment tool to ensure equipment mated properly in production. Also suggested support rails on the sides of the rollover fixtures to hold the molds in position so they couldn't move while rotating.
7. Next problem to solve was the downtime associated with pump failure in production. Through the use of equipment usage data collection using excel spreadsheets and observations during the pump rebuild process I determined the cause of catastrophic pump failure. The problem was isolated to one part within the pump and data analysis revealed the average number of cycles at which the part failed. I was then able to suggest a cycle limit on the pump which allowed us to change the pump during scheduled downtime rather than have failures during production. Productivity increased dramatically and the pumps were able to run 40,000 cycles in prroduction before rebuild. I do not have a cost savings figure but I am sure it is astronomical. Pump downtime decreased about 75%.
8. Safety Issue: We had clamps holding our launder down to our pump that placed an employees hand with 6 inches of the molten aluminum. The emloyee had to stand on the furnace and reach over the equipment to engage clamps. I suggested a clamping apparatus that was overhead of the equipment. It did away with 2 clamps, incorporating one clamp of a different type that did the same job without having to climb on the furnace.