Clinique Metal Lipstick Cap

REQUIREMENT

The manufacturer was shutting down a facility which had been running this part from its inception for nearly two decades. Their system, which was designed specifically for this part, still ran a 10-20% reject rate. The challenge was to take the good equipment from their facility and team it up with a new system in our factory to increase the yield to 95%+.
 

SOLUTION

The deep drawn brass part first had to be automatically high polished completely then satin polished on the high ridges only. Manufacturer owned equipment had to be moved, set up, and reengineered in its new location. Then, a new silver plating set up was created along with new fixtures to ensure flawless silver plating on the outside and on the inside of the part. A new cleaning line was developed to clean dark areas, smudges, and stains left from the deep drawing which caused an unacceptable appearance on the inside of the part. Finally, the water based topcoat used prior was replaced with a much stronger UV coating applied over the silver plating.
 

RESULT

The unique three-step process was developed, installed, and producing within 3 months time causing no shortage of parts on the filling line. Reject rate was decreased to 3-4% for the entire three-step process as production quanties soared to over 200K pieces per week! Nobody in the whole world had the capability, speed, and know-how to coordinate these three finishing methods (polishing, silver plating, and UV coating) into a highly successful system within the required timeframe.