The Marshalltown, IA plant of Lennox Industries, a manufacturer of residential and commercial heating and air conditioning equipment, required automation for a new portion of their gas furnace manufacturing process. The company needed to permanently mark the metal orifices with measurement codes. The measurements on these orifices provide a way to match the correct orifice size to the appropriate furnaces.

With help from Matthews International (Pittsburgh, PA), a part marking system was developed. The Pro-Point Model 2324 programmable indenting machine is used with a bowl feeder. The bowl feeder delivers the orifices to the Pro-Point.

The Pro-Point is microprocessor controlled and fires a single carbide-tipped stylus to form legible dot matrix characters. The complete system prints, releases and sends the marked orifices into holding bins. The indenting machine can mark one orifice every 3 seconds, an improvement over the manual system.

For more information on parts marking, call Matthews International at 412-665-2500, visit www.matthewsmarking.com.