The bright
trim adorning cars rolling off automobile dealer's showroom floor
radiates from the car wheels. Many years have passed since wheels
were viewed as simply functional. Often touted as `jewelry for the
automobile,' chrome features and accents are now an expression of
individuality for car owners. It is no secret that the call for
aftermarket, smartly designed, bright aluminum wheels (plated or
polished) has grown quickly. The OEMs are keeping pace by offering
customers stylish chrome plated wheels as an option on many vehicles.
In fact, the popularity of chrome today has prompted the Big Three
and others to make these features standard on many of today's automobiles.
Kuntz Electroplating
is at the forefront of this thriving market; although, it was a
humble beginning for the company, which was founded in 1948 by the
late Oscar Kuntz. In more than 50 successful years, Kuntz Electroplating
Inc. has grown from three employees using a garage for workspace,
to more than 1,000 employees using close to a full city block. Kuntz
is now controlled by two of Oscar's sons, Bob and Paul Kuntz, who
have been committed from day one to quality and customer and employee
satisfaction.
Kuntz Electroplating
Inc., (KEI) is in the heart of Canada's major auto-parts supplier
hub in Kitchener. The shop runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, plating
wheels and bumpers for Daimler-Chrysler, Ford, Mazda, General Motors,
Nissan and Toyota. KEI established itself early on as a quality
metal finisher for steel and aluminum bumpers. When automotive engineers
and designers began to recognize customers' desire for chrome-plated
wheels, Kuntz was there. KEI added and adapted new plating capacity
to handle the increased demand for nickel chromium plating on steel
and aluminum wheels and anticipates plating 1.3 million wheels this
year.
While touring
the facility, Mr. Dave Kuntz, sales and marketing manager and son
of Chairman Bob Kuntz, pointed out the Chrysler LHS and 300M wheels.
"When we first entered into the program, Chrysler was trying
to predict what its customers would want. Chrysler decided to offer
a painted wheel as standard equipment and gave the customer the
option to choose a chromium-plated aluminum wheel if desired. Chrysler
initially predicted that approximately 30% of its customers would
purchase the plated wheels. Instead, nearly 85% opted for the chrome-plated
wheels. That's good for business," Dave smiled. The popularity
of the plated wheel convinced Chrysler to drop some painted wheels
entirely and feature only chromium plated aluminum wheels on certain
vehicle lines.
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Bumper
plating line at Kuntz Electroplating.
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The
facility has four plating lines. One line features smaller plating
tanks used for research and development. "We have used
it to evaluate various aluminum pretreatment processes for various
types of aluminum substrates. Successful methods would then be used
on the main plating lines," stated Dave. However, the line
is also used for production, plating wheel caps, centers, and more
recently, OEM snowmobile parts.
The three other
plating lines are the main production lines, used to electroplate
aluminum wheels, steel wheels and bumpers. Two of these lines are
programmable hoist-operated and the third is a return-type automatic
production line.
One of the
large hoist plating lines is set up to plate steel substrates while
the other is arranged to plate both steel and aluminum substrates.
(Cleaning processes for both aluminum and steel are built into each
plating line). Although both steel and aluminum parts are nickel-chromium
plated, the copper layer is no longer used for the steel parts,
because parts receive four nickel layers, including micro-discontinuous
chrome. Kuntz also has the ability to pixie parts where necessary.
This is a technique that will develop micro-porosity in the exposed
chrome surface, which in turn helps slow corrosion.
In its plating
processes, Kuntz tries to be as efficient as possible by maximizing
the number of parts per work bar. This varies depending on the nature
of the work, bumpers versus wheel rims, and so on. For low current
density areas on various parts, auxiliary anodes are fitted to the
parts to ensure plate uniformity. Because of the design complexity
of the aluminum wheels, auxiliary anode use is the norm. Anodes
are used on approximately 80% of the steel bumper production. There
are times when the lines run using 100% auxiliary work.
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Wheels
on the conveyor belt leading to the polishing/buffing machine.
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Due
to the nature of the work, Kuntz Electroplating has developed a
unique style of auxiliary anode. While many shops use platinum-plated
titanium rod anodes, Kuntz has made cost efficient use of a platinized-niobium-mesh
that is welded onto titanium rods. Although it is initially more
expensive to tool anodes this way, Kuntz has found that the anodes
last longer in high-volume plating processes. If certain regions
of a particular anode wear due to use, these areas can be repaired
individually while not affecting the remaining anode areas. Therefore,
the anodes stay in service longer and do not have to be shipped
out for replating, which is specialized, expensive and time consuming.
In addition, all auxiliary repairs done in-house are computer-tracked
and statistically compared to their production life.
For most steel
and aluminum parts, a significant amount of time is devoted to polishing
and buffing in order to improve the substrate's appearance and surface
readiness for plating. Of the aluminum wheels to be plated, "There
are two basic wheel designs to deal with," noted Dave, "machined
surface wheels and `as-cast' surfaces. With the machine surface
you can simply remove the machining lines with abrasive media, and
a turntable polishing machine fitted with a series of flap wheels
and buffers does the rest."
Prior to plating
an "as-cast" wheel, a considerable amount of handwork
is done to prepare the surface due to the roughness resulting from
the manufacturing process. Squeeze-cast aluminum wheels provide
a smoother surface. Polishing booths are set up in a series of rows.
Each polisher performs a specific part of the polishing process
and passes the wheel on to the next polisher. A wheel passes through
a polishing row every 10 minutes. "There is no other way to
do it!" said Dave. "That is why we currently have nearly
300 people polishing wheels on a daily basis."
Although polishing
turntables can do repeatable work, they cannot duplicate the hand
operations necessary to reach into the deep recesses that are part
of some of the wheel designs. However, robots can be used to duplicate
the repetitive hand polishing/buffing operations. An investigation
into the use of robotics led Kuntz to install six work cells with
two robots each. The robots are not intended to eliminate the highly
skilled human polishers. Rather, they are in part intended to help
minimize the incidences of repetitive strain injuries common in
this type of work. Also, defects in castings never show up in the
same place twice, so humans will always be required to seek them
out and remove them.
Kuntz designs
and rebuilds most of the buffing equipment on its shop floor to
meet its specific needs. "The turntables we use for buffing
are becoming more difficult to find and buy used," commented
Dave. "They are snatched up by any company doing polishing.
When we do buy a turntable, we are actually buying the structure,
since we take it apart and put it back together again (frequently
referred to as "Kuntz-i-fying" it.)
Most of the
plated rear bumpers, primarily for SUVs and light trucks, are sprayed
with a protective waterborne anticorrosion backcoating. Three robots
currently spray these bumpers on-line, however demand is increasing.
Additional automation is in the planning stages. Kuntz currently
has the capacity to finish approximately 5,000 to 5,500 bumpers
a day.
Because of
the company's size and continued growth, Kuntz recently added a
co-generation facility. The facility features natural-gas-powered
engines that generate electricity and steam as a by-product. The
current electricity output provides the numerous plants with 50%
of all required power. The steam is used, along with other sources,
to heat the plating tanks. Kuntz sees the co-generation facility
as moving a step toward self-sufficiency, since it protects the
company by supplying enough power to all vital operations in case
of an emergency power outage. In addition to co-generation, the
company also maintains a full complement of spare, treated nickel
solutions for use in emergencies or maintenance programs. Kuntz
believes these steps provide its customers greater peace of mind
when they choose Kuntz as their sole finishing supplier.
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Wheels
are automatically offloaded from the delivery platform for
processing.
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While Kuntz
has been innovative in the plating and polishing areas of production,
it is equally committed to being a leader in protecting the environment.
As a result, "Up to 80% of everything we purchase is recyclable,
including boots, gloves and containers," explained Dave. Each
plating line has its own primary waste treatment line. Traditional
waste treatment methods are used; however, Kuntz has also instituted
some not-so-traditional pollution prevention and recovery methods.
"Our goal is to ultimately eliminate any potential adverse
impact of our operations on the environment, our employees and the
community. We employ 10 full-time technicians to ensure water and
air quality." At this time, Kuntz is investigating adopting
"zero-discharge" technologies for select areas of its
plating operation.
Air quality
is also of great importance to Kuntz. The company operates more
than 300 pieces of air-handling equipment, including HVAC roof-mounted
equipment and air-pollution abatement equipment. Horizontal crossflow
packed-bed and composite mesh-pad scrubbers have been installed
to control plating exhaust. Three-stage filtration is used in the
paint booths for particulate overspray control for non-VOC backcoating
operations.
Kuntz's quality
assurance unit and modern laboratory also help to keep the plant
operating at peak efficiency, while keeping it involved with leading-edge
technological developments. Lab technicians continuously monitor,
test, update and maintain plating chemistry throughout the production
run. As new products and processes are introduced, the lab samples,
records and modifies chemical balances to meet specified control
parameters. Data is recorded and presented in statistical formulae.
Quality has
undeniably been one of the essential elements of its success, and
it has made the company one of the finishing industry's premier
bumper and wheel electroplaters. The company's focus on quality
led it to QS9000 certification in 1997. Furthermore, Kuntz's concern
and commitment to the environment resulted in voluntary third-party
certification to the ISO14000 standard in 1998. Kuntz Electroplating
was one of the first metal finishers in the world to become certified
to this environmental standard.
It is Kuntz
Electroplating's continuous commitment to quality, the environment
and its employees that explains why it is North America's largest
and most diverse polishing and plating facility for original manufacturers
of steel and aluminum wheel and bumpers. Indeed, the future looks
BRIGHT for Kuntz Electroplating Inc.
