Automotive
Challenge
BOSCH is one of the world’s leading international providers of technology and services with four business sectors; represented in 150 countries with 375,000 employees.
Robert Bosch Produktie NV based in Tienen is part of the BOSCH group and is a world leader in the development and production of wiper blades and wiper arms.
The company was founded in 1973 and employs around 1,100 associates. It is the lead plant for production plants in Asia, Europe and South America as a knowledge and development centre.
The urge to continuously improve and innovate is the strength of this plant. BOSCH focuses on quality, innovation and customer orientation.
VINTIV was asked to build a new machine that provides the end caps of wiper blades with the customer logo and wear indicator.
The machine should be flexible and easily adjustable, and should be able to handle a high volume of caps.
Product changeover can be done quickly and without adjustment.
The total cycle time for applying the logo and wear indicator may be max. 2.5sec.
Product quality must be ensured and checked at all times.
Solution
VINTIV has developed and built a machine which performs the following consecutive tasks :
- Supply of plastic end caps.
- Buffering of products.
- Product separation.
- Loading of turntable with 6-axis robot.
- Checking the product position.
- Laser engraving of caps with customer logo.
- Supply of wear indicator sticker.
- Apply & press of sticker with SCARA robot (4-axis).
- Quality control of logo and sticker with vision system.
- Disposal of good products to packaging.
- Disposal of faulty products to scrap station.
Results
In addition to the above points, the machine has an automatic empty run function and no additional actions are required during the product changeover. When selecting a new product, the settings are automatically applied by the machine.
