Machine Spotlights: The Next Series – 40 years of Engineering Excellence (Page 6)
The latest Machine Spotlights continue drawing on TQC‘s project archive — systems built across four decades for clients in aerospace, automotive, medical devices, and precision engineering. Each example is chosen to illustrate a specific engineering challenge and how it was resolved.
If you have a test, assembly, or automation requirement in development, contact us to talk through your application. We can point you to relevant work from our portfolio where it’s useful.
Medical Spring Handling and Packing Systems (supplied in 2018)
Taking coiled springs through heat treatment, checking and packing into trays and bags
Springs coiled automatically required packing in a suitable way to meet end users requirements. Throughput volumes dictated that automation was needed with springs produced at upto 8000 parts per hours
Production lines integrating spring coiling systems, industrial ovens, part and tray handling systems. Standard bagging system integreated to count and bag spring automatically
The custom designed handling equipment allowed seamless transfer of coiled springs through the annealing (heating) process and into the final packaging (trays or bags). Inline checking ensured only good product was packed.
Electrical vehicle battery tray leak test facility (supplied in 2012)
Pressure decay leak testing to check for any defects in the battery tray fabrication
Automotive battery trays operate in an exposed environment so need to be leak test to prevent water ingress that will damage the electronics. An inline test is needed to be integrate with the assembly line that transport the parts on bepoke pallets at typically 1 part every 90 seconds (matching vehicle production rate)
Leak testing station with palletised conveyor for automatically transfer of battery trays through the test station. Automated tray lift, clamping and sealing with permiter P seal. Vacuum pressure decay testing at 16 mbar provides sensitive leak detection across the entire sealed volume
The static clamping and sealing head worked in combination with the product lifter provided a repeatable leak testing station. Accruate pressure control and monitoring detected a pressure drop of 2 mbar that indicated a leaking part.
Automatic Laser Marker of Automotive Dampers (supplied in 2011)
2-Station rotary machine for laser marking and vision verification of a variety of circular dampers.
Automotive dampers need to be marked with timing information, a 2D datamatrix and human readable text. These low volume parts have many vehicle specific variants so a flexible solution is needed to mark all parts with common equipment
System with interchangeable tooling, manual load and unload station and automated laser marking with vision verification.
Incorporating interchangeable mechanical tooling with machine intelligence and auto focus laser head allows market of different diameter parts. Line scan camera check and validates marking. Load and unload simultaneous to marking sequence for efficient throughput
Automotic Seak Checking Fixtures – Front and Rear (supplied in 2005)
Fixtures to allow mimic of car mounting positions for seating checking
Seat assemblies need checking to ensure they fit into the vehicle correctly. This is critical as any bad fitting part will stop the car production line
Three bepoke fixtures, one each for LH front, RH front and Rear Seats. Designed to allow top and bottom tolerances to be mimicked for all mating vehicle assembly features. Resin support bases machined to vehicle CAD to provide accurate location of seat assemblies.
3D CAD designed tooling ensured seat assemblies were positioned as if in the vehicle. Adjustable fixing provided the ability to move critical parts between high and low tolerances, this provided informsation of fitment when the seats are put into the vehicle.
See Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5 Here……More machine spotlights coming soon