Unlike many of their competitors, Landice uses the same frame, belt, deck, rollers and motors in their home products as they do in their club models. As a result, their products are more durable than typical treadmills for home use.
Hydro Aluminum manufactures the aluminum components for Landice treadmills, including the major structural side rails of the walking platform, upright rails, handle, and the covers for the control panel. What started as a relatively straightforward lineal manufacturing operation has evolved to the point where Hydro is now a complete program partner responsible for shipping kits in ready-to-assemble packages.
We perform this work at our Kalamazoo, Michigan plant. In addition to extrusion, component production involves processes such as miter cutting, CNC machining and deburring.
Quality finish essential
A key part of the project is the finish, which must have a high-end furniture quality. Achieving that finish and delivering defect-free parts to Landice is a study in quality enhancement.
“With so many exposed surfaces, we’ve learned to treat the Landice treadmill like a fine piece of furniture so that it will have a strong aesthetic appeal,” said Robert Kaplan, Hydro representative serving the Landice account.
“It takes longer to produce furniture-quality components because you want them to be perfect,” added Lance Auyer, Hydro business development manager.
“The finish was one of the biggest hurdles we had to overcome,” said Kaplan.
We worked with our paint partner to produce a high quality powder paint finish with the look and feel of fine office furniture. To meet strict quality standards, the paint contractor changed their production process and the way they racked parts for painting to better protect each piece.
New finishes being added
In addition to the pearlescent white powder paint finish, Landice is adding a textured black finish and a clear anodized finish.
“We’re particularly excited about the clear anodized finish because it shows off the aluminum that makes up our frame assembly,” said Mike Pignatello, purchasing executive for Landice. “Rust is an issue with treadmills, and the aluminum gives us a competitive edge. We want to highlight the use of aluminum as much as possible.”
Handling important
With the first delivery, Landice expressed a concern that too many parts were being damaged during handling and shipping. This led to the development of special packaging and Hydro's learning to take extra precautions in manufacturing.
We now take exceptional care to protect the extruded components during the manufacturing process from gouges and deep scratches. We also work to avoid graphite marks from the run-out tables as the extrusion is coming off the press. Operators are careful that the extruded parts are handled properly by the fabrication equipment at all times.
To assure that parts arrive safely, we use specially designed foam “fingers” that allow each layer of parts to be separated. The fingers are stacked on custom-made skids and then shrink wrapped. The fingers are returnable for reuse making them environmentally friendly. A new packaging design now allows us to provide all of the aluminum parts for a single treadmill in one kit.
“Hydro made improvements in every area of their operations on our behalf,” said Pignatello.
The result is that Hydro continues to be a valuable Landice manufacturing partner.
