Manufacturing companies can’t afford downtime in their operations due to a purchased component being out of stock or worst discontinued. Extended periods of machine downtime that shut down the entire assembly line cost thousands of dollars per hour, that’s why it’s important to get purchased components from a reliable supplier that stocks product available for…
Robotics and automation offer positive benefits to workers, not the least of which is a safer, easier, and more comfortable work environment. Larger companies have a dedicated ergonomics engineer that deal with this subject while smaller ones have the automation or process engineer champion this for the company. Low-Force Movements On the factory floor, low-force…
AGI O-ring grippers are designed to facilitate automated installation by spreading and ejecting the o-ring onto a part quickly, it can also be used for part seating applications. Via a vibratory feeder bowl, O-rings can be singulated and fed down a track to a dead nest fixture where the gripper can pick and place one…
When designing a robotic or automated assembly machine, applying a gripper correctly unit can make the difference in the reliability and productivity of the assembly machine system or robotic cell. Gripper calculations will vary depending on many factors such as, part acceleration, part weight, physical size, tooling length, tooling jaw style (encompassing grip or friction…
Taking both a short and long view, there’s no doubt that robotics is a key component of mainstream automated assembly in manufacturing processes today. The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) reported that 2012 saw the second highest number of robots ever sold: 159,346 units. IFR estimates the worldwide market value for robot systems at $26…
Automation carries a wide range of inherent benefits, not the least of which are an expected lower production cost per unit and a freeing up of semiskilled workers to focus on tasks that are, well, semiskilled rather than remedial and repetitive. So while the decision to automate should be an obvious one for assembly manufacturers,…
The 1980s film “The Terminator” and its sequels are examples of great storytelling. The movie franchise brought into the 20th Century a couple of literary ideas from the Industrial Revolution: fear of world conquest by robotic machines. The reality of robotics in the 21st Century is quite different, though. The world manufacturing community is focusing…
Developing a closer tie between product design and assembly can yield major benefits that ultimately result in lower costs and higher quality. The closest tie between product design and assembly is actually incorporating significant adaptability of products to the assembly line. It’s estimated that about 85 percent of product cost is rooted in design. An…
Manufacturers who don’t include downtime in their total cost of operation are deceiving themselves about performance. When a student gets a grade of zero for missing an exam without making it up, it completely messes up the test score average. The same is true of extended periods of machine downtime that shut down the entire…