Case Study 1

One of the major defense laboratories in India wanted to develop a critical and complex component for a missile system that was a problem area for the lab. The usual investment casting process was not capable of producing the part with the requisite quality. K6 designed and developed special tools and innovative new processes using unique soluble core techniques to successfully deliver this component at an advanced quality level that was able to pass Radiography tests.

Case Study 2

A German company wanted to develop a new component for an aerospace system. The product was at the feasibility stage and they wanted to test the component using the actual end use material and required just a few numbers for tests. The short run nature and the lead time requirements did not justify design and development of a tool as is the method for medium to large scale manufacturing. The customer experimented with various other casting suppliers with 3D printed patterns in special plastics but were unsuccesful in meeting even the base level requirements. After many unsuccessful trials, the company was referred to K6 by the top aerospace and defense lab in India. K6 developed completely new shelling and shell firing processes for the new component printed using special plastics from a very expensive German 3D printer and was able to succesfully deliver a product of great quality, even better than the regular wax patterns, that passed radiography and MPI tests with good surface finish. The customer was very impressed and engaged K6 as a premium channel partner.

Case Study 3

A vendor to the largest defense factory in India had trouble meeting one of the complex product needs for their large customer. They tried to develop a tool and after many iterations, failed to cast a quality component. They approached K6 and asked for advice. K6 performed a comprehensive tool analysis and along with its engineers and with its partner academic institution, performed a comprehensive measurement analysis using sophisticated CAD based optical measuring system and redesigned and remachined the same tool at minimal cost instead of incurring the cost of completely new tooling as they had been advised by other customers to do, and was able to cast this highly complex product successfully.

Case Study 5

A customer who supplies pressure sensors to large industrial houses used sand casting, welding, and fabrication as the methoding. The process was not only laborious with high lead time and expensive but also the quality of the finished product left much to be desired. The customer turned to K6 to investigate the feasiblity of using the investment casting process as an alternative. K6 studied their current design which had numerous allowances of material for machining, casting, etc and was able to optimize the design by reducing the material weight by around 30%, by doing away with all the maching and sand casting allowances while retaining the same design intent and delivered a product that not only costed less in total cost of ownership but improved the quality of the casting and surface finish by an order of 5 relative to the original sand casting, even though sand casting roughly costs 50% less than a typical investment casting.

Case Study 6

A vendor of agricultural equipment wanted to reduce costs, improve quality and reduce lead time for a critical component that goes into one of their pieces of equipment. Their current method of manufacture was welding, fabrication and machining. They engaged K6 to reengineer this product for casting to improve qulaity and reduce costs. K6 redesigned the component appropriately for casting, used a better grade material for the casting to improve the quality especially surface finish, reduced material weight without compromising the structural soundness by using the leverage of freedom of design of the investment casting process and was able to reduce the cost and improve the lead time as well as the quality of the end product.