A new piece of equipment on the Pine Bluff Arsenal's M485 155mm illumination projectile line will make life a whole lot easier for the Ammunition Operation employees working on that production line in the future.
This new machine will help streamline the process, cut down on waste and increase quality and production, according to Jim Hayley, project engineer with the Directorate of Engineering and Technology.
"The machine should be faster, less labor intensive and easier to use," he said. "It should allow for better quality and better product."
Through a partnership with Toole Army Depot in Utah, the new drill and pin machine was fabricated at Toole's machine shop, and brought to the Arsenal recently to begin installation and prove out. "The guys are here this week (June 22-26) working on the electrical cabinet, hydraulic power and other things to get it up and fully functional," said Hayley. "They have been working on the wiring non-stop. They have been working until about 7 p.m. every night since they have been here."
About 1100 cycles of the machine has been done, said Hayley. "We have about 100 canisters that we are going to also send through the machine and make sure it is ready to run before we turn it over to production. On the good side, we are hoping to be back up and running July 6, on the bad side it would be the week after."
The process has taken about 18 months to get everything to come together for the new drill and pin machine.
"It was a severe blow to the Arsenal in 2007 when several lots failed on the M485. We had a band aid fix by bringing in a worker to manually add felts to the round so that the fuse would stay in place and retested," said Hayley. "It worked but it was a very labor intensive procedure. This machine will make the production workers job a lot easier because it will drill all four holes and pin all four at the same time."
"The machine cycles in about 37 seconds right now. Previously, there was a worker testing the load, someone putting the load in the canister, someone running the drill machine, and two or three people hammering the pins, etc. Now it only takes one operator to run this machine."
"We are reducing the required number of touch-labor employees it takes to run this line, replacing some very old 1950s era equipment with a state-of-the-art machine that is safe and reliable," said Roch Byrne, director of Ammunition Operations. "One of the biggest components of this machine is the safety factor. It will help our folks be able to pin the canisters safer and produce a quality product to the end user - the Soldiers. "
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