Construction & Building Services

The system assembles a two-part product consisting of a PVC pipe fitting and a nut, supporting up to five different product variants.

The components are bulk fed into the system. The fitting is fed via a bowl feeder onto an escapement conveyor. A vision system identifies the component and its orientation, enabling a six-axis robot to pick the fitting and place it into a dedicated assembly nest.

The nut is bowl fed and transferred to an escapement where a six-axis robot picks the nut and assembles it onto the pipe fitting. Each variant of pipe fitting has a dedicated assembly nest that is automatically presented depending on the variant being assembled. Assembled parts are picked out of the nest and placed into part outfeed bins.

The PVC pipe is picked from a bespoke nest located at the end of the conveyor using a custom pneumatic gripper mounted on an industrial six-axis robot. An overhead vision system is used to verify part position and orientation. The robot places the pipe into a bespoke nest mounted on a rotary indexing table, where it is secured by a guided pneumatic clamping cylinder.

In parallel, the nut is fed to a separate pick position at the end of its conveyor. A second industrial six-axis robot picks the nut using a bespoke pneumatic gripper and presses it onto the collar of the clamped PVC pipe using controlled robot-applied force.

Once the assembly operation is complete, the clamp retracts, allowing the robot to remove the finished assembly from the bespoke nest and deposit it into a chute.

The cell’s ability to assemble up to five different PVC pipe variants is achieved by mounting multiple bespoke nests on the rotary table. The table is automatically indexed to the correct nest position based on the selected recipe.