Please click here for examples of chip management systems we have engineered for our clients.

• No transport costs
• Minimized handling costs
• Paying to melt the metal only once—when ready for use—instead of at the Secondary smelter, and then again upon return

In-house conversion also offers intangible but very real advantages, including:

• Complete control over the valued commodity of chips—you know what you have and where it is
• Reduction in environmental liability—you know how your chips are being stored and handled
• Accountability of chip quantities—the smelter’s “amount received” may not always match the amount sent.

So, while the advantages of in-house conversion are many, there are concerns. A primary one is safety.

Read more…

The flexibility of being able to use a machining center for different alloys provides an undeniable competitive edge. However, alloy changeovers, from steel to brass for example, lead to unacceptable contaminant steel in the brass chip stream. Chip management industry leader Inter-Source recently met that challenge for an automotive component manufacturer.

The manufacturer had already realized the value of processed chips; a sophisticated chip management system handled chip collection, sizing, drying, and loading. Such processed chips are highly desired by secondary smelters, but only if ferrous contamination is addressed.

With over two decades in the chip management industry, Inter-Source had already solved similar challenges. Combining experience with engineering expertise, they designed a magnetic separation triple-drum system that segregates ferrous contaminants from other alloys. For this particular application, the third drum is necessary; Inter-Source has engineered about a dozen similar solutions over the years, and most satisfy contaminant issues with a single or dual drum configuration. Inter-Source’s engineering expertise means that each customer’s unique challenges may be optimally solved with a tailored solution.

“This customer came to us first because of our experience,” noted William Nemedi, President of Inter-Source, “and they haven’t had to go any further. Our focus is optimizing chip management. We have the engineering expertise, insight, and enthusiasm to handle any challenge.”

And helping a manufacturer compete globally? All in a day’s work.

An automotive parts manufacturer developed an innovative state-of-the-art machining center to more efficiently produce components. It works beautifully, outproducing even the most optimistic parts-per-hour projections.

Unfortunately, more parts produced means more chips produced. The resultant high volume did not flow out with the coolant stream as expected.

A maintenance engineer on the project had worked with Inter-Source years ago at a different company. He knew their expertise and focus was chips – handling them, drying them, managing them. He called William Nemedi, Inter-Source President, and asked what could be done.

“Such a request isn’t unusual,” noted Nemedi. “Manufacturers tend to focus on their main product – the part – but manufacturing’s by-products of coolant and chips also demand recognition. With efficient managing, they can become another profit stream.”

Nemedi visited the manufacturer. Having just installed this state-of-the-art machining center in a specially designed facility, they wanted a solution that wouldn’t require moving it or cutting the floor. They needed innovation that matched their machining center. Inter-Source delivered.

The solution is a robot-operated vacuum collection system, which utilizes a ceiling-installed material-handling vacuum fan to pull the centrally collected chips from the middle of the machining center. A cyclone discharge decelerates and separates the chips from the air stream. The chips fall into trailers for later more conventional processing.

The innovative machining center, with its equally innovative chip handling, is still ramping up to full production. Look for more information and more detailed video at a later date.

As companies strive to cut costs, they’re finding substantial benefit and savings from tightened control of valuable chips. This increased control is possible with Inter-Source integrated chip storage and staging systems.

Inter-Source’s integrated storage and staging systems are another industry first. True to their engineering of chip management solutions from “tool to trailer,” Inter-Source orchestrates the appropriate components to move processed chips to a secured holding silo. Weight is monitored, and when payload is reached, chips are automatically and rapidly discharged into the awaiting container. The bulk storage systems free floor space typically cluttered with holding carts and may even be installed overhead to support lean manufacturing initiatives. This automatic, safe, and dry storage reduces labor and handling and eliminates liability issues. Further advantages include a rapid ROI, especially for manufacturers who can now easily store chips for internal remelt.

“More and more customers are remelting their own chips,” explains William Nemedi, President of Inter-Source. “Our systems not only allow them to eliminate the tolling fees, but they also eliminate the liability issues associated with hauling to a secondary smelter, while gaining the advantage of raw material control and immediate access.”

Even customers who don’t remelt their chips gain financial benefit with Inter-Source storing and staging systems. Automatic storage and weight monitoring means more efficient hauling, as trailers are only onsite for the time required to load. “And loading is very fast,” shares Nemedi. “At one installation we routinely offload 40,000 pounds in 20 minutes.” The automatic monitoring allows manufacturers to track the weight they’re sending to a smelter for later verification of monies due.

With an international marketplace hungry for metals, control, accountability, and security are becoming more important. Inter-Source addresses these needs with integrated storing and staging; it’s only one of the approaches Inter-Source engineers when providing comprehensive chip management solutions.

When a manufacturer’s product mix changed, the dramatically different chip configuration of cast iron rings impeded coolant flow at the central coolant filter. The manufacturer turned to Inter-Source to solve the dilemma.

“We thrive on this type of engineering challenge,” noted William Nemedi, President of Inter-Source. “There were various ways to address the problem, but only one true solution.”

That solution—the rotary ring shredder—is an industry first. The shaftless shredder consists of a horizontal cylinder, open at both ends. A stationary bank of cutting teeth is installed inside the cylinder. Cutter rings, separated by the teeth, rotate within.

As the scrap-laden coolant stream enters the cylinder, sheared metal and coolant immediately drop through the gaps into the filter. Large solids are grasped by the rotating cutter rings, and pulled into the shearing surfaces. After appropriate sizing, they too drop into the filter.

Like other Inter-Source shredders, the rotary ring shredder has automatic reversing for solids ejection, and is built to solve problems. The open-ended shredding chamber ensures flow to the central coolant filter for the unlikely possibilities of extreme volume fluctuations or scrap anomalies.

The rotary ring shredder is part of a comprehensive chip management system that daily moves 40,000 pounds of saturated chips, via a half-mile network of in-floor push bar conveyors and a coolant stream of 7,000 gpm, to a central coolant filter. Capacity constraints and space limitations demanded innovative engineering to solve the problem.

Inter-Source principals hold nearly two dozen patents in multiple countries, representing the industry’s most important advancements. The rotary ring shredder went from concept to installation in about three months.

Nemedi was recently honored for his design of a small shredder. The compact shredder promotes the proper handling and processing of saturated machining waste by sizing it for optimal transport and maximum fluid recovery. The shredder’s size makes it not only more economical for manufacturers to be eco-friendly, but the unit may be more easily integrated in the often space-constrained manufacturing environment.

Innovation is a way of life for chip management industry leader Inter-Source. The compact shredder is one of nearly two dozen patents held by Inter-Source principals for advancements in all phases of chip management. Inter-Source is a leader in the engineering and manufacture of equipment and systems that efficiently handle–from tool to trailer–all by-products of precision machining.

The global recession forces manufacturers to seek every possible savings.  A manufacturer’s ability to remelt in-house, instead of sending chips to a secondary smelter for conversion, offers such savings.

The vast majority of in-house furnaces are best suited to remelting solids.  Remelting anything else, like chips, inherently leads to excess metal loss.  In a failed effort to eliminate the inherent metal loss, some manufacturers will first puck less-than-dry chips for their in-house furnaces.

In “wet pucking,” compression removes some–but not all–of the fluids.  Moisture is inherently trapped, causing complications such as:

• Danger of explosion
• Reduced furnace efficiency due to the need to burn-off fluids
• Loss of fluids that could have been reclaimed
• Additional emissions to monitor, capture and process
• Safety, housekeeping and environmental liability issues from moving, storing and handling less-than-dry pucks

Inter-Source’s dry pucker eliminates these problems.  It seamlessly integrates with other Inter-Source chip management components, accepting clean, dry and consistently sized chips from the wringer, and compressing them into pucks optimal for remelt.  With significant volume reductions depending upon chip configuration, dry pucking also yields transportation savings.  Other advantages include decreased fuel expended during remelt, increased metal reclamation, and elimination of the many hazards of handling wet chips and pucks.

Inter-Source, with its industry reputation for innovation, engineered the dry pucker in response to customer concerns about conversion cost.  Inter-Source President William Nemedi noted that “Quite a few customers have expressed interest in the success of the concept.”

Short runs of exotic or expensive alloys are routine in the medical device and pharmaceutical OEM industries. Now those alloys and their cutting fluids may be routinely—and optimally—recycled as well, with Inter-Source’s 12″ wringer.

The compact wringer is easily integrated into constrained spaces typical of a manufacturing environment. Receiving fluid-laden chips from the machining center’s discharge, the wringer runs on-demand to separate chips from fluids. Dried chips are discharged into the appropriate collection point; fluids are returned to the machine’s sump.

The 12″ wringer joins the industry’s most extensive line of wringers, available only from Inter-Source. It has the durability and experience-proven features found in Inter-Source’s 50″, 40″, 30″, 20″ and 15″ wringers, including the guarantee to produce dry chips with a 2% or less retained moisture content. Only Inter-Source guarantees this maximum fluid removal.

“While we primarily developed the 12″ wringer to support lean manufacturing, the wringer’s on-demand feature, coupled with its unsurpassed reclamation properties, also supports green manufacturing,” noted Inter-Source President William Nemedi. “And its maximum reclamation ensures a rapid ROI.”

Click here for more information about Inter-Source wringers.