Automated Assembly Systems

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The automotive industry experienced a record number of vehicle recalls in 2018, and this year's tally isn't far behind. Many of those issues have been caused by electronics or software glitches.

The automotive industry is at the threshold of a disruption not seen since the Brass Era of the 1900s. Electric vehicles, connectivity, mobility-as-a-service, and autonomous vehicles promise to change the future of transportation in the same way that the "horseless carriage" did a century ago.

The lives of manufacturers would be so much easier if all their automation processes were homogeneous. Unfortunately, there are many that require customization to satisfy the unique requirements of an automated work-holding or material-handling application.

There's nothing quite like a multistation automated assembly system. Watching robots, actuators and indexers go about their carefully choreographed routines with little or no human intervention can seem nothing short of miraculous.

Automated assembly is becoming increasingly common, even for small manufacturing companies. Robotic assemblers improve productivity and boost output while ensuring that results are more consistent.

Load cells and sensors used with presses measure several key variables, such as ram force, distance and time, and help ensure they stay within allowable tolerances.

The fundamental start of any project is a scope of work document, which specifies what we want the project to achieve. The project scope may start out broadly described based upon business objectives, but it will become increasingly detailed over time.

In my first postcollege job, I was a manufacturing engineer for Cummins Engine Co. in Columbus, IN. Two weeks into the job, my boss came to me with a project to purchase an industrial wash system, and I leaped at the opportunity. It was a disaster.

When manufacturing engineers are tasked with automating a process that is currently done manually, their main question for an automation supplier is, "Have you ever automated this specific process before?"