At its manufacturing facility in Fargo, ND, Case New Holland (Amsterdam, Netherlands) performs final assembly of its heavy-duty, articulated agricultural tractors. Weighing 60,000 pounds, the machines have long presented a material handling challenge as well as a challenge for safe, efficient assembly.
Vision systems are excellent for guiding robots. However, for some applications, such as tightening bolts, a vision system is of little help, because the end-effector and tool are so close to the fastener they block the camera’s view.
To get bonded assemblies out the door as quickly as possible, researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center have developed a noninvasive system for monitoring the cure status of epoxies and other resins.
Tamper-proof fasteners are intended to keep the average Joe from, well, tampering with an assembly. For most applications, that’s good enough, but not all.
Let’s say you have circuit board assembly that contains red and green LEDs. Automated optical inspection can tell you if the LEDs are present and oriented correctly. But how tell if a green LED has been accidentally swapped with the red one?
Most fasteners that provide permanent load-bearing threads in thin materials require both sides of the workpiece to be accessible during installation and final assembly. When the workpiece can only be accessed from one side, threaded rivet nuts and studs provide a solution.
Although cordless tools are becoming increasingly popular on assembly lines today, many manufacturing engineers continue to view them with suspicion. And that’s too bad.
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