The assembly machine for our nationally recognised medical product manufacturing clients, is in the final stages of production at the Directech QM-Systems factory.
The purpose of this bespoke automated system, is to create a continuous assembly of medical curtains. The stage shown below focuses on the implementation of plastic hooks onto the material. As it is in the commissioning phase, all robotic processes are running at 25% speed. The system begins with hooks being fed onto an infeed conveyor belt using two ALPHAMATION LIMITED vibratory bowl feeders. The orientation of the hooks on the belt is detected via a Cognex Corporation vision system, with this information being fed to the Schneider Electric picking robots found further down the line. Both robots pick up a hook and place it into the tooling mounted onto one of 4 rotary tables.
The rotary table indexes underneath the curtain that is being continuously fed through the cell, and using an ultrasonic welding system, is welded onto the material. Each welding station is capable of moving independently from one another. This is so that as the curtain is indexed into position, each station can move to the correct weld point. Which is in reference to where the seam of the curtain is when it is indexed. Once welded, the curtain continues down the system to the next phase. This machine is controlled by a Schneider Electric interface with a 12 inch HMI to allow the operator to have full control of the system.
