Gasket Assembly

Challenge
The customer's existing machines were fully automated, including part feeding. The machines were very expensive and were not agile. They suffered long delays on part changeovers and did not adapt easily to new products.

The customer wanted a machine concept that:

• Drastically reduced the investment required to meet production rates
• Changed over faster on existing products
• More easily adapted to new products
• Maintained high quality and part traceability

Solution
A manually loaded but otherwise fully automated machine with quick change tooling. One of these agile machines could produce 60% of the output of existing machines at 40% of the cost. Deploying two machines gave the customer greater output with less investment. Most importantly, the customer could simultaneously run two different part numbers— a capability not present with existing equipment.

Key Features

• Automatic verification of loaded parts before process initiation
• Monitoring of riveting process to ensure quality
• Automatic eject of non-conforming parts
• Laser marking of parts for identification
• Quick-change tooling allows rapid changeover for different parts