The Midlands Enterprise Awards has taken place for four years now, and is in place to give recognition to SMEs all over the region who are striving to better business in their specific industries. The Midlands as a region has grown substantially for many industries over the years, and is now in a place where it can offer countless growth opportunities to any SME looking for the best starting platform. The region is fantastic for emerging companies and start-ups and is also fast-becoming a popular place to reside for the general public too with house prices and cost of living incredibly appealing.

With many industries and businesses choosing to make the Midlands their home, the awards programme is incredibly competitive and exhibits some fantastic stand-out nominees every year. The Midlands Enterprise programme looks to recognise those businesses who have distinguished themselves from their competitors and have achieved exceptional success. The most recent awards scheme seems particularly special in that it is recognising the success achieved in what has arguably been one of the most difficult years for businesses and their industries worldwide.

With this in mind, Simmatic Automation Specialists is delighted to have been commended for their hard work and achievements having been named Vacuum and Pneumatic Products Innovators of the Year 2020. The award comes at a fantastic time after an incredibly testing year for the industry as a whole.

Established in 1997, Simmatic Automation Specialists is based in Worcestershire, and specialises in the manufacturing and supply of complete pneumatic solutions and vacuum handling products. Working with many different industries such as the food and drink, manufacturing, and automotive industries, Simmatic strives to find solutions where others cannot, and boasts extensive experience and expertise when it comes to technological developments. As a company that thrives off challenges and demonstrates excellent commitment to fulfilling their customers’ requirements, it was a pleasure for Simmatic to gain national recognition for their demonstrated innovation and excellence in business practises and their overall performance as a company.

The selection and judging process of the SME awards seeks to highlight true market leaders, and therefore it is a delight for Simmatic to have had their stellar efforts recognised with this prestigious award.

Speaking of the win, Dale Simmonds, managing director said: “It is an absolute pleasure to have been awarded Vacuum and Pneumatic Products Innovators of the Year 2020. Not only is this a win for the company, but it is a recognition of achievement for each and every member of our team that goes the extra mile on a daily basis for our clients. 2020 was a difficult year for all, and I couldn’t be more proud of the entire workforce for their commitment and resilience. To be recognised for this hard work by such a prestigious awards programme is fantastic, we are all absolutely thrilled.”

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The grippers feature a strong but lightweight aluminium body frame, which makes them ideal for use on robot arms where the maximum load may be limited. Their gripping surface is faced with EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer) foam, which deforms in use to give an excellent seal irrespective of the shape of the object being picked up. The foam is also soft, ensuring gentle handling, and durable to guarantee a long working life.

A key benefit of V-Grip grippers is that they have integrated VMECA vacuum cartridges, which means that they require no external vacuum pumps or vacuum pipework. This makes them easy to install and since the vacuum cartridges have no moving parts, almost no maintenance is needed. The grippers also incorporate air filters together with user-adjustable check valves that can be set to give a wide range of air flow settings, so, the lifting force generated by the gripper exactly matches the requirements of the application.

GM-series products in the V-Grip range are 130 mm wide and are available in various lengths from 220 mm to 1,200 mm. Simmatic can also supply larger grippers with similar characteristics and features and for applications that require small grippers, the company offers the Mini Grip range. This features models from 16 mm to 60 mm wide and as with the GM-series products, they can be supplied in a variety of lengths.

As with all of their products, Simmatic backs V-Grip grippers with an expert support service, which includes providing advice and guidance on product selection, applications, installation and maintenance.

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Simmatic assessed the requirements carefully and decided that a cup that had pliable lips would be the best choice for handling the flexible sheets. There was, however, a further complication. When the sheets are stacked ready for transfer to the oven, the top of the stack is often tilted a little, which means that the pick-up system needs to be tolerant of angular misalignment.

Drawing on the exceptional number of cup options available in the VMECA range, a soft-lipped 80 mm Smart Suction Cup was selected. These cups incorporate a “smart plunger” comprising ball joint and levelling spring, which means that they automatically compensate for angular misalignment up to ± 21º. They are also self-centring, so that even if successive sheets of composite are presented to them at different angles, they can still pick them up without difficulty.

Trials confirmed that the soft lips of the cup followed the contour of the product well, allowing a good vacuum seal to be achieved. In addition, the smart plunger easily dealt with the non-uniform presentation of the composite sheets. In service, the handling system devised, manufactured and supplied by Simmatic has proved to be extremely reliable.

There is, however, a sequel to this tale. A Simmatic competitor offered to provide the end customer with a second system for essentially the same application, but at a lower price than that offered by Simmatic.

When installed, this low-cost system could not be made to work – success depends on the unique properties of the VMECA Smart Cups. These cost a little more than generic cups but have a wider angular compliance than any other product of their type. Once again, however, Simmatic came to the rescue by rebuilding and retrofitting the failed system and putting it into full working order in less than two weeks.

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In every industry today, there’s constant pressure to increase productivity and drive down costs. Undeniably, handling products manually is both inefficient and expensive but sometimes switching to automatic handling is no easy task, especially if the products in question are loosely wrapped or inconsistently presented to the handling system.

In such cases, rather than develop complex and costly mechanical contrivances to grip and lift the “awkward” products, machine designers often find that vacuum gripper technology offers a better and more cost-effective solution. To get the full benefits of this versatile technology, however, a little thought and insight is necessary.

Consider, for example, a machine that needs to pick up rolls of biscuits that are loosely wrapped in film, and place them in a carton for shipping to the retailer. Because the film is slippery, the biscuits are fragile and the packs are cylindrical, devising a purely mechanical solution is difficult. Designing a vacuum head to pick up and move the packs is much easier but, as we’ll see, there are some potential pitfalls.

It might seem that the ideal solution is an electrically driven vacuum pump, used in conjunction with a rectangular vacuum cup with flexible lips dimensioned to fit the biscuit packs. But there’s a problem. The biscuits are not tightly wrapped so the wrapping film may move a little when the lips come into contact with it, preventing a good seal from being achieved. Because only one cup is being used to lift the pack, a poor seal will probably destroy the vacuum, and the pack will be dropped.

This approach has two other shortcomings. The first is that it’s impractical to start and stop the vacuum pump as each pack of biscuits is lifted, so it must run continuously, which is wasteful of energy. The second issue is that the vacuum cup will need pipework connections to the pump, and such connections are always prone to leakage, which further degrades efficiency.
An efficient and cost-effective vacuum-based solution is possible, however – all that’s needed is to take a rather different approach. The first step is to replace the single rectangular vacuum cup with, say, three standard circular cups. Each cup will cover the width of the pack, and the three between them will cover the length. The second step is to replace the vacuum pump with three separate vacuum generators – one for each cup.

The vacuum generators are tiny devices, typically 10 to 20 mm in diameter and around 150 mm long. They are powered by compressed air and have no moving parts. They are small and light enough to be mounted directly on the cups, so there is no need for connecting pipework. The vacuum generators can also be turned on and off instantly, simply by controlling the compressed air supply, so they are very efficient in their use of energy.

With this arrangement, if one of the cups fails to seal when lifting a pack of biscuits, the other two cups are unaffected, so the pack will still be held securely. In summary, this arrangement provides a solution that is reliable, cost-effective, energy efficient and virtually maintenance free.

Flexible packaging is, however, far from being the only handling challenge. Even rigid items – such as tiles, for example – can be problematic, especially if they are stacked irregularly. A vacuum handling solution similar to that outlined for the biscuit packs, appropriately scaled for handling heavier items, is viable, but an additional refinement is needed.

This is the use of suction cups that will lift the tiles efficiently and reliably even if they are not presented square on to the cup. The cups incorporate a “smart plunger” comprising ball joint and levelling spring, which means that they automatically compensate for angular misalignment of 20º or more. They are also self-centring, so that even if successive tiles are presented to them at different angles, they can still pick them up without difficulty.

Other interesting challenges in handling “difficult” items, which can readily be solved by informed use of vacuum technology, include lifting glass sheets without marking them, and transporting hot sheet metal components. In both of these cases, the solution depends on selecting the right material for the vacuum cups.

With the glass sheets, all commonly used materials leave marks that can apparently be cleaned off quite easily, but reappear every time the glass mists up. And with the sheet metal components, commonly used cup materials have very short lives when working at high temperatures. Some suppliers of vacuum lifting products are prepared to go beyond the ordinary, and develop cups to address these issues and, when these are used, the problems are simply solved.

Vacuum lifting technology offers versatile, dependable and cost-effective solutions for an enormous range of product-handling applications and is, therefore, the key to reducing costs by increasing the level of automation in production processes. As we’ve seen, however, it is essential to choose the right products and plan the implementation carefully. And to help with this, the support of an expert supplier, like Simmatic, that can demonstrate high levels of expertise and wide experience, is invaluable.

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