Weimeng | Doubling production capacity and halving labor: What happened in Ping Golf's injection molding workshop?

Golf enthusiasts have always valued brand accumulation and equipment performance. But few people know that a golf club comes fromraw materialHow many precision processes do we need to go through to reach the finished product. PING, founded in Arizona, USA in 1959, is a well-known brand in the field of golf equipment.

　　As a partner of PING for over thirty years, Weimeng deeply understands the company's obsession with precision.Faced with the dual pressure of short delivery cycle orders and large-scale production increases, PING approached us - not to expand manpower, but to completely rewrite the production logic with a powerful one-stop solution.

01The Three Great Mountains of Sports Equipment Manufacturing
How to climb over PING?

In in-depth communication with Steve Jeffries, Senior Injection Molding Engineer at PING,Weimeng has identified three core pain points：

　　01Excessive reliance on manual labor

Product trimming relies entirely on manual operation, often requiring two to three workers to work simultaneously to keep up with the pace of injection molding machine discharge. The existence of the second shift is essentially to make up for the bottleneck of manual efficiency.

　　02Uncontrolled waste disposal

The channel waste generated during production is directly discarded without any channels for crushing, recycling, and reuse. The processing characteristics of high filling modified plastics enable equipment wear and material loss to increase synchronously.

　　03Equipment mismatch

The specifications of the original injection molding machines in the workshop are generally too large, and the locking force and injection volume exceed the actual production needs, resulting in high energy consumption and maintenance costs.

　　We have many short lead time orders, which pose significant challenges to automation. The two tasks of waste recycling and blending, as well as bulk procurement of raw materials to compress production costs, have encountered numerous obstacles as a result.

02Tailored solutions
A set of automated production units

Accurate selection

|From 'big horse pulling small car' to 'just right'

Weimeng sales engineers assisted PING throughout the entire process of selecting specifications for injection molding machines and peripheral supporting equipment. Steve Jeffries conducted a comprehensive analysis based on the production data of all product categories in the factory, and determined the optimal injection molding machine tonnage that is suitable for the actual working conditions in the workshop.

　　Before the renovation, the specifications of the injection molding machines used in the workshop were generally too large, and the locking force and injection volume of the equipment exceeded the actual production needs - this hidden waste was completely eliminated after precise selection.

Equipment integration

|From 'fighting on their own' to 'one-stop closed-loop'

The new automated injection molding unit built by Weimeng for PING is composed of Weimeng SmartPower servo hydraulic injection molding machine and W808 linear injection molding machineThree-axis manipulator、 Tempro plus D mold temperature machine combined with S-Max crusher, while assisting customers in converting the original four chamber machinemoldUpgrade to an eight cavity mold.

The core value of this integrated molding equipment lies in:

　　Reduce production hours

　　Reduce labor input

　　Significantly reduce the output of corner waste

Three pain points, solved at once.

Human computer reconstruction

|From 'two shifts' to' one person managing two machines'

With the help of this tailor-made production unit, the PING workshop is able to achieve almost unmanned continuous production, doubling production capacity directly. The second production shift has also been cancelled simultaneously, and now only one operator is needed to control two injection molding equipment at the same time.

　　Before launching this Weimeng work unit, all product trimming was done manually. Nowadays, the positioning accuracy and repeated operation stability of Weimeng robotic arms are the key supports to ensure the quality of our products. In the process of cutting off the sprue and separating the runner, the entire operation is stable and reliable.

Rebirth of Waste

|From landfill treatment to 75% recycling and reuse
　

Recycling crushed materials
Add Proportion
It needs to be based on the product type and raw material material
Flexible adjustment and adaptation

The PING workshop has a wide range of raw material categories, covering polypropylene ABS、 Various plastic materials such as polyamide; And the counterweight accessories require customized modified mixtures, and most products are processed with high filling modified plastics, which requires production equipment to have outstanding wear resistance.

Previously, the workshop produced waste materials
High scale
After introducing Weimeng's new recycling production system
Material wastequestion
Get fundamental'Improvement'

The tolerance of different raw materials to the blending of recycled materials varies significantly: polypropylene has the strongest adaptability and can almost fully use recycled crushed materials in production; But thermoplastic polyurethane TPU must strictly control the proportion of recycled materials to avoid thermal degradation and performance failure of raw materials.

　　Previously, all production waste was directly sent to landfill for disposal. Now, about 75% can be recovered, crushed, and reused in production through the Weimeng S-Max crusher, significantly reducing raw material loss.

Batch consistency in injection molding is the core lever for strictly controlling the production of defective products. Nowadays, with the addition of 40% recycled crushed materials in production, the precision of finished product molding remains stable and controllable.

03Why can this plan run smoothly?

The successful case of PING reveals a key trend:

The ultimate goal of injection molding automation
It's not about using fewer people, but using the right people
Value people
Liberate from repetitive labor
Invest in what is more needed
The link between "judgment" and "creativity"

The reusable core logic of this pattern:

　　·One stop integration

Unified brands for injection molding machines, robotic arms, mold temperature machines, and crushers to avoid compatibility issues with multiple supplier interfaces,Weimeng provides full process support from selection to debugging

　　·Mold upgrade synchronization

The transformation from four chamber to eight chamber is not simply a matter of quantity stacking, but a systematic engineering that precisely matches the automation rhythm

　　·Recycling closed-loop design

The online crusher is directly embedded into the production unit to achieve "on-site circulation" rather than post-processing

　　·Remote maintenance system

rely onWeimeng Supporting Maintenance SystemOperation and maintenance personnel can remotely access the device backend to troubleshoot hidden dangers, while on-site personnel only need to be responsible for basic maintenance operations such as parts replacement and voltage testing

　　For decades, Weimeng has been a trusted business partner of PING, continuously providing us with cutting-edge technology, improved after-sales support, and customized molding solutions.

At present, there are a total of nine injection molding machines in the PING Phoenix factory area, seven of which are from Weimeng, with a tonnage ranging from 22 to 300 tons.

From Karsten Solheim knocking out the first push rod in the garage in 1959 to the precise removal of every sprue by robotic arms in the Phoenix factory today, PING has proven for over sixty years that the pursuit of precision is the gene that never fades in golf equipment manufacturing.

And Weimeng has proven with over thirty years of companionship that true automation is not about replacing people, but about bringing manufacturing back to its rightful state——Efficient, precise, and sustainable.