Quality Assurance Using Halogen Moisture Analyzer
Accurate Moisture Analysis Assures Swiss Icon’s Quality
Switzerland-based Victorinox must uphold its reputation with every “Original Swiss Army Knife” it produces. METTLER TOLEDO moisture analyzers play a critical role in ensuring that incoming goods, such as plastic granulates, contain the correct moisture content.
Karl Eisener founded Victorinox in 1884 and it has been delivering knives to the Swiss Army since 1891. Throughout its 130-year history, the company has remained true to Swiss values for manufacturing precision and product excellence, crafting just over 100,000 Swiss Army knives, multi-tools, and kitchen/home-use knives each year.
Critical moisture content
Victorinox carefully tests every batch of plastic granulate it receives to ensure moisture-content accuracy. More than 15 tons of raw materials are stored at once, and up to 1,000 kg batches are dried daily. This front-line quality control also includes tests for color and thermal properties. If an incoming load of granulate does not pass quality control tests, it is withheld from production. Secondary testing occurs when a customer order is received. At the point of order, granulate is sampled from the dryer and tested again. If the plastic contains too much moisture to achieve the required density and hardness, the granules go back to the dryer. But, if moisture content and other quality specifications are met, the granulate batch is fed automatically into the injection molding machines that produce Victorinox knife handles with the characteristic cross-and-shield logo.
Easy-to-use equipment
Victorinox works with six different plastics, each with its own drying method for moisture analysis. METTLER TOLEDO moisture analyzers have been the key to fast heating and precise temperature control to ensure highly reliable moisture content results. Additionally, the analyzers are easy to program. This is essential, as a single person prepares samples, changes tooling, and manages seven injection molding machines per shift. Preprogrammed shortcuts are easily identified by the material number.
Ensuring product quality
Since deciding on METTLER TOLEDO moisture analyzers, Victorinox has been able to ensure correct material moisture content. Therefore, should there be an injection molding problem, the moisture content is already eliminated as the potential cause. With this improvement, Victorinox has been able to cut discarded batches and speed up production by as much as 10 percent.
