ISSUE 15: Your Forming Fluid Needs a Clean Getaway
Every forming fluid needs an exit plan. Get in, protect the die, get out clean. Disappear before anybody downstream has to deal with you. A clean getaway. Most fluids never get evaluated on that. They get picked at the press on three things: price per drum, dimensionals and appearance coming off the die, and operator acceptance. […]
ISSUE NO. 14 The Baseline You Need Before Trouble Hits
Things go wrong on lines. That’s not really news. A coating starts looking a little rough. Parts stop coming out water-break-free. A customer flags something. Suddenly the whole team is in problem-solving mode, trying to figure out what changed and how to fix it before the next shift. And in that moment, the question that […]
The Basics of Continuous Improvement on a Pretreatment Line
Most lines only get attention when something goes wrong. A part comes back, someone chases down what changed, the line gets steady again, everyone moves on. That approach works, but it’s expensive, and it’s why you keep seeing the same problems. You’re fixing the symptom on the parts instead of the thing that caused it, […]
ISSUE NO. 13 School’s out, PLU is in!
Summer’s here. And while everyone else is winding down . . . we’re opening up the classroom (not the kind with desks and pop quizzes). We’re talking about pretreatment. Finishing. The stuff that makes or breaks your coating, and that most people have had to figure out on their own. Paint Line University (PLU) is […]
What Innovation at Circle-Prosco Actually Looks Like (Hint: It Starts on Your Floor)
There’s a difference between launching products and solving problems. A new product doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t solve something specific on the line. A reformulation doesn’t matter if the constraint a manufacturer is dealing with isn’t in the chemistry — it’s in the process, or in what they can’t see happening between shifts. Development […]
ISSUE NO. 12 The Inside-Out Fix for Sneaky Surface Contamination
Automotive cooling systems have an inside-out problem that often gets missed. The outside of the part looks great. Passes inspection, ships on time, no complaints. The inside… That’s where it gets interesting. Flux residue. Free iron. Fabrication junk — all still bonded to internal aluminum surfaces after brazing. Just… sitting there. (That’s not us being dramatic. […]
HVAC Metal Forming Fluids | DL-Series Advancements
When’s the last time you evaluated a forming fluid anywhere other than the press? If the answer is “we check it at the press, it works, we move on”…. you’re not alone. That’s how many plants handle it. They check lubrication, surface finish, and cost. Then they move on. It’s a perfectly reasonable approach for […]
ISSUE 11: The 3-Stage Trade-Off You Don’t Have to Accept
Three-stage pretreatment lines have a reputation for simplicity, but that simplicity comes with a trade-off in performance and flexibility. For those running traditional iron phosphate lines, those limits often look like…dirty, ugly sludge building up in your tanks and risers. Steel-only substrate limitations that keep you from taking on new work. Corrosion performance that never […]
ISSUE NO. 10 HVAC is about to heat up. Is your line ready?
When the line’s running and parts look fine, there’s little reason to question what’s happening at the surface. But when production ramps up to meet summer cooling demand, hidden issues start to show. Every year, we see HVAC lines under peak demand expose the same weak spots. Coils that smell. Brazing joints that fail inspection. […]
Celebrating Chinese New Year with Our Taicang Team
As Chinese New Year begins, we want to recognize and celebrate our team, customers, and partners across China. While CPI manufactures specialty chemistry in Bloomington, Indiana, our Taicang facility has been an important part of how we serve customers in China since 2013. For more than a decade, the team there has supported manufacturers through […]