Difficult handling of flexible materials for a successful automation process
The development of a large, fully automated production system for the automotive industry once again called for IBG's innovative capabilities. The challenge for us was the fully automated assembly of rubber and soft plastic moulded parts, which also had to be easily adaptable to changing production conditions.
Rubber and soft plastic moulded parts have many parameters that make handling much more difficult for a successful automation process than injection moulded or metal components.
With a specially developed process technology, however, IBG has succeeded in automatically applying bellows, which serve to repel dirt, to the surrounding components. The bellows are fed to the assembly device via a handling robot. Eight specially developed, pneumatically operated claws grip the outer edge of the bellows, which is only a few millimetres wide, and expand it with a defined force. This allows the components requiring protection to be automatically inserted into the bellows and enclosed in a defined manner.
In another station, rubber sleeves are pulled over the metal assemblies. This task was also solved by IBG with the help of a special device for expanding these sleeves. The sleeves are gripped both at the outer edges and over a front edge and expanded for the subsequent assembly steps. In any case, automation solutions for moulded rubber parts require a much more unconventional approach than is necessary for dimensionally stable plastic or metal parts. The special design, surface selection and force-side adaptation of the claws made it possible to fulfil this task and prevent damage to the rubber bellows.
