Automotive quality control of car air compressors
If you have ever parked in the sun on a hot day, you know how important it is to have a good air conditioner in your car. But you may not have given much thought to the parts that deliver that cool, refreshing breeze. One essential component is the compressor, which powers the system.
In Europe, Sanden Manufacturing Poland produces compressors for leading automotive brands, implementing rigorous automotive quality control measures to ensure optimal performance. They cast, mechanically treat, and assemble parts in a 40 million square meter facility before shipping the parts.
Automotive quality control
With such a large operation and high-profile customers, Sanden implements rigorous quality control to ensure that each compressor operates as it should. It is no surprise, then, that the company turns to advanced analytical techniques like scanning electron microscopy to monitor products coming off the production line.
According to Artur Bednarek, production quality supervisor at Sanden Manufacturing Poland, the challenge is quickly identifying and reacting to problems without slowing production.
“We need to know what kind of materials can contaminate compressors,” he said. “When we find the problem, we need to react very quickly.”
Phenom Desktop Scanning Electron Microscope
Sanden relies on the Thermo Scientific™ Phenom™ ParticleX™ TC Desktop Scanning Electron Microscope to investigate the nature of the contamination they encounter, including the precise size of particles and how frequently they appear. After installing the instrument in 2020, Bednarek and his team were impressed by not only the level of detail coming out of the instrument but also how easy it is to operate.
“All we need to do is put in the filters, make a program, press play, and the hard stuff is done by the microscope,” he said. “After a short training, the operator can already make quite advanced usage of the microscope.”
That training, as well as ongoing support for the microscope, comes straight from the Thermo Fisher Scientific team provides the training and ongoing support for the microscope, helping Bednarek and his colleagues learn how to set up and run their new system.
The microscope is also fast, which makes it particularly useful in a production environment. The special sample holder can accommodate four filters at once, enabling the imaging of multiple samples in a single run. This eliminates the time it would take to switch samples and adjust settings between each imaging session.
Contamination control in manufacturing
The Phenom ParticleX TC Desktop SEM has already helped the Sanden team reduce contamination in their compressors, ultimately making them more robust. It also helped them investigate and resolve a quality issue with one of their customers.
“We found unexpected things which we could not imagine at the beginning of the analysis,” Bednarek said.
The versatile desktop system enables quick characterization, verification, and classification of materials using a range of data, including chemical composition and detailed surface information. By combining precise data with simple operation, the instrument helps manufacturers around the world enhance automotive quality control, streamline production, and deliver more reliable products.
Learn more about the Phenom ParticleX TC Desktop SEM >>>
Rogier Miltenburg is an applications and product specialist at Thermo Fisher Scientific
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