Innomech has designed the new system to automate a particularly labour-intensive and repetitive product packaging process for a series of components that are used within automotive fuel injectors.  The new fully customised system gives SG Technologies the option to increase production throughput for this product line by 150%, while also improving its manufacturing process efficiency and reducing work in progress. It also means the company’s skilled operators can focus on more varied and challenging manufacturing tasks such as short production runs of highly specialised parts.

The automated system eliminates all manual handling of finished magnetic components as they are being transferred from work in progress trays into specially-designed packaging trays ready for shipment. It has also been configured to handle two distinct product families, each containing multiple variants and without requiring any manual adjustment. The system works by gently sweeping the components onto a conveyor belt, a high speed laser micrometer verifies the height of each part to within a few microns, and then a Codian ‘pick and place’ robot transfers five components at a time into a packaging tray.

“Innomech has developed the ideal system to automate a potentially rate-limiting product packaging process and to provide us with increased flexibility and capacity to meet fast-growing and changing customer demands. The system also removes any risk of potential damage to products through manual handling which is critical in our drive towards zero defect manufacturing and even greater process efficiencies,” said Stuart Hutcheon, commercial director at SG Technologies.

Innomech was first appointed by SG Technologies to carry out an in-depth feasibility study and to recommend the most cost-effective way of automating the company’s existing manual packaging process. The consultancy’s automation specialists then built a working prototype to demonstrate key aspects of the system before proceeding with the design and development phase. The new system has been designed to operate 24/7 and took around 10 months to develop from initial concepts through to system build, test and integration into the client’s existing production line.

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Pictured: Tim Mead (left), managing director of Innomech and Matthew Sumpton (right), director of FCS Automation.

Automation consultancy Innomech and control systems specialist FCS plan to pool their complementary skills for targeted new business opportunities and to build on the success of a large-scale project that they recently completed for one of the world’s largest medical equipment manufacturers. The two companies worked together to help a global corporation transfer an existing multi-stage automated system from one of its US sites into a UK production facility, while at the same time updating and reconfiguring it to significantly improve its efficiency.

“FCS Automation has provided Innomech with specialist software development skills for several years but this latest project was the first time we have worked as partners from the first customer meetings through to final machine signoff. The 12 month project was so successful that we believe other medical device manufacturers could benefit from our combined experience of working in validated production environments, together with our skills and ability to find system-level improvements to help boost product quality and manufacturing efficiency,” said Tim Mead, managing director of Innomech.

The recently completed upgrade for the US manufacturer included replacing several aspects of the machine’s hardware to improve process control of critical manufacturing steps; renewing the safety system to enable easier and faster access to the machine for routine setting and maintenance; and implementing a more robust software-based product tracking system. A system-wide review of the software also enabled the full integration of a product bagging station that had previously operated as a stand-alone function, giving a further boost to manufacturing efficiency.

As part of its in-depth analysis, the joint Innomech/FCS team was also able to identify several new ways to streamline the machine’s operational performance. Additional features were added to the user interface to simplify machine operation, and a comprehensive code review identified the causes of occasional screen lock-ups and system crashes that previously interrupted routine production and affected overall line efficiency.

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“Innomech’s automation specialists worked alongside our in-house team to automate a series of intricate manufacturing tasks and to ensure their innovative solution fits perfectly into our existing workflows,” says David Parmenter, operations manager at ITW. “None of our upstream manufacturing processes had to be amended, and there is no need for ‘work in progress’ trays, preloading of parts into special hoppers or double handling of any components.”

Innomech was initially appointed to automate two particularly labour-intensive and repetitive manufacturing tasks that required multiple operators with consistently high levels of manual dexterity: adding injection moulded drive gear and idle components to the correct ends of wound or empty spools; then pairing the spools and attaching the start of the ribbon onto the take-up spool. The consultancy’s automation engineers needed to modify the manufacturing process to ‘bridge’ the two spools using an adhesive label because the manual steps could not easily be automated. The label has the added advantage that it can be printed on demand with customer-specific, marketing or other messages as required.

The new system uses a Toshiba robot with a sophisticated laser-guided 3D vision system to load spools into the machine. The robot scans the box of wound spools, works out the depth and position of components, before picking up groups of wound spools, verifying they are correctly orientated and loading them into the machine. A separate loading system feeds empty spools from a hopper before the ends are fitted and locked in place.

The machine then rotates the wound spool to ‘find’ the end flap, applies a label to link the wound and take-up spools, winds the empty spool to take up the exposed adhesive surface, and then passes the paired spools onto ITW’s existing flow wrapping station. Innomech has also configured ITW’s new automated assembly machine to handle multiple different spool sizes with simple menu-based selections allowing operators to quickly and easily change it over as required.

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