EVERETT, WA—Inside Boeing’s assembly plant here, two robots glide along tracks on either side of a 106-foot wing for the 777. The robots wash the wing, apply solvent to remove dirt, rinse and then spray two different types of paint. They even reach into complex spaces inside the open wing root that must be painted for corrosion protection.
A recent wordworking project has given me a greater appreciation of assembly line challenges. Has a home project ever informed your work in the assembly plant?
Well known for its engineering expertise, The EDAG Group develops vehicles and production systems for auto manufacturers all over the world. In conjunction with FFT EDAG, its sister company, The EDAG Group also creates complete production facilities for body in white modeling and vehicle assembly.
Kids have loved robots and toys for generations. The Rodon Group has decided that now is the perfect time for a robot named Baxter to help pack toys in the company’s highly automated manufacturing facility.
NORDLINGEN, Germany—Six-axis robots and a rotary indexing table are the heart of a high-speed automated assembly system that produces 200,000 automotive sensors daily.
It has become fashionable lately for some U.S. companies to tout how they’ve reshored production from overseas. Baldor Electric Co. isn’t one of them—it never left. The company has been manufacturing electric motors, drives, bearings and other motion control products in the United States for decades.
Recently introduced USB3 Vision joins several other established standards, all of which increase component selection, simplify setup and expand the market for vision systems.
Component interoperability for PC-based vision systems has come a long way in a short time. The main reason for this quick evolution is interface standards, which the AIA, a machine vision trade group, began introducing in 2000.