Vamistor
Corporation
| COMPANY/LOCATION: |
Vamistor Corporation, Sevierville, Tennessee |
| PRODUCT: |
Precision resistors, both fixed and variable for defense, aerospace
and commercial applications |
| YEARS IN BUSINESS: |
17 in current location |
| EMPLOYEES: |
55 |
| SITUATION: |
In late 1994, Vamistor experienced adhesion problems with a silver
paste the company had been using for several years in the manufacture of
precision resistors for military applications. After several unsuccessful
attempts to resolve the problem with the supplier, and facing a production
line shutdown and the layoff of 20 the company's employees. Vamistor decided
to seek outside technical assistance and put in an urgent call to the University
of Tennessee Center for Industrial Services which referred the call to
the Oak Ridge Centers for Manufacturing Technology. |
| PROJECT: |
The afternoon of the day in which the call for assistance was made,
a senior research staff member at the High Temperature Materials Laboratory
called Vamistor and arranged to have samples of the "good" silver paste
and the one with problems hand-delivered to Oak Ridge. The following day,
the Oak Ridge researcher sent to Vamistor an auger electron spectroscopy
(AES) analysis comparison of the two silver pastes. |
| RESULTS: |
Vamistor's president and the researcher discussed the findings of the
AES analysis, which proved conclusively that the "new-bad" silver paste's
composition was not the same as the "old-good" paste. The analysis showed
that the new paste had less silver content than the original formula and
also contained calcium, which the original formula did not contain. Further,
the analysis determined that the new paste was basically silicone dioxide
(Si02) which behaved as an insulator when the silver paste was designed
to be a conductor.
John Boatman, president of Vamistor, estimated that the technical
assistance allowed the company to retain 20 jobs, reduced production costs
by more than $10,000 per year, and avoided sales losses of up to $100,000
in 1994 and between $500,000 and $1 million in 1995. "It is obvious
that without the ORCMT assistance Vamistor would have been forced to layoff
employees in [its] production line and resolution of the problem with the
supplier could have taken weeks if not months, which could have been disastrous
for Vamistor," Boatman said.
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Technical assistances provided to the private sector by the Oak Ridge
Centers for Manufacturing Technology (ORCMT) and its manufacturing extension
partners throughout the United States.
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