Industry: Manufacturing
Project type: Robotics
Application: Automated assembly of plastic products

In conjunction with our customer and mechanical partner, Dematec devised the concept for the automated assembly of a range of plastic products from their constituent components. Assembly had previously been a manual, labour-intensive process that could not be cost-effectively automated using traditional fixed tooling due to short batch runs and large number of component variants (900 component variants for 80 assembled product types).

The Adaptable Robotic Assembly Cell uses a combination of five industrial vision sensors (DVT / Cognex) coupled with five robots (Motoman) to provide the flexible and “intelligent” operation for the identification and pickup of the constituent components, and the final assembly of the plastic products. The control system uses a configurable ‘recipe’ based system so that the operator can select the product to be assembled from a touchscreen, and the assembly cell will automatically adjust its settings. Cell changeover from one product to another can be achieved within minutes.

The Adaptable Robotic Assembly Cell has been a successful undertaking for the customer, with four cells presently in operation, and more cells being considered for 2010/2011.