OKAY Industries Wins
Product Development Award For 2nd Straight Year

CLEVELAND, OH. March 22, 2006. OKAY Industries, New Britain, CT, has received the 2006 Ulbrich Award for Competitive Excellence in Product Development. The company produces metal stampings and subassemblies for the automotive, defense/aerospace, electronics, medical/surgical and other specialty industrial markets. OKAY won the award for developing a highly sophisticated component (a unique implantable staple) typically manufactured as a Wire EDM/machined component into a significantly lower cost stamping while maintaining critical features. This is the second year in a row OKAY Industries has won this prestigious award. Last year, the company won the award for its innovative manufacturing method for Roller Finger Followers, an engine component.

In winning the 2006 award, OKAY Industries worked with its customer, a medical device manufacturer for vascular access management, to develop an implantable titanium staple that was only 3 millimeters in diameter. There were several challenges associated with stamping this part, including the susceptibility of titanium to gall itself to the tooling surfaces. To prevent this, tools were developed with very generous wipe radii on the form dies and punches, and surface finishes were held to five micro or less. Die lubrication was also critically applied to create a barrier between the titanium part and the die material. In addition, the staple’s over-bent legs posed a challenge for progressive dies. To solve this problem, a transfer station system was designed to form and eject the part from the tooling. It transfers the part to and from six tooling and part ejection stations.

Since the staple is an implantable device, the parts require cleaning. OKAY developed a method of removing the staples directly from the progressive die tooling, sending them through a flush system and then automatically loading them into the packaging. The packaging is incorporated directly into the customer’s assembly process without ever touching human hands. Lastly, OKAY created a vision system that checks the critical features of every part as it comes off the press. The system is connected to the PLC on the press, which will stop the process immediately if any feature is out of specification.

Because of the development of OKAY’s implantable staple, the customer received an extremely tight tolerance titanium component with process capability at a significantly lower cost than WEDM and machining operations. The part cleaning operation and vision system ensures that every part meets requirements without the need for secondary operations to perform these functions, which is standard for medical components.

The product development award is one of eight Awards of Excellence in Metalforming, presented annually by Precision Metalforming Association (PMA). Sponsored by Ulbrich Stainless Steel, Inc., North Haven, CT, it acknowledges a PMA manufacturing member company that demonstrates outstanding innovation in developing and manufacturing a product that best uses metal in place of a nonmetal competitive material. Along with recognition in industry publications and exhibitions, OKAY will receive a $1,500 cash prize, which will be donated to OKAY’s existing Central CT State University School of Technology Scholarship Fund.

PMA is the full-service trade association representing the $41-billion metalforming industry of North America—the industry that creates precision metal products using stamping, fabricating and other value-added processes. Its nearly 1,200 member companies include metal stampers, fabricators, spinners, slide formers and roll formers as well as suppliers of equipment, materials and services to the industry. Members are located in 30 countries, with the majority found in North America―in 41 states of the United States as well as Canada and Mexico.


EDITOR’S NOTE: More information on PMA’s Awards of Excellence in Metalforming is available at www.metalforming.com.