Thred Taper Customer:
Western Enterprises
Gary Galauner, Manufacturing Engineer

Western Enterprises is a major supplier of products for the control, storage and transmission of high pressure gases to the industrial, medical and specialty gas markets.

Since Western Enterprises wraps approximately 250,000 parts per year with PTFE tape, it was crucial for them to find a way to increase productivity while keeping production costs to a minimum.

“The numbers speak for themselves. When we field tested the Thred Taper automatic PTFE tape machine, we compared it to the time it took to wrap fittings by hand. From start to finish (unloading boxes, wrapping fittings, loading boxes), it took approximately 12 seconds to hand wrap one fitting with PTFE tape…but since Thred Taper could wrap fittings with PTFE tape in just two seconds, the time to complete the entire automated cycle was half that at 6.76 seconds. The Thred Taper automatic PTFE tape machine allows us to wrap approximately 533 parts per hour compared to only 300 by hand. And when you wrap close to 20,000 parts per month with PTFE tape, that kind of production time savings is invaluable.”