The North American automotive industry sold some 17.2 million vehicles in 2018. Assuming each vehicle has four brakes (one for each wheel), that’s 68.8 million assemblies. That’s a lot of brakes.
A multistation robotic assembly system designed and built by Edgewater Automation in St. Joseph, Michigan, is making a dent in that production requirement. The conveyor-based system puts together a brake corner assembly for a major automotive customer at a rate of 120 pieces per hour. Measuring 12 by 12 by 15 inches, the assembly consists of 17 parts.
Vibratory bowl feeders equipped with air jets handle the small parts. Robots handle the large parts, which are delivered in returnable plastic containers.
“The bulk delivery containers were not precision-molded and had a lot of variation, which affected our automation,” remembers Seth Vander Ark, marketing director for Edgewater. “We used mechanical devices combined with vision-guided robots to overcome this.”
Another issue involved dust shields. “Dust shields were supposed to be delivered in a stack of 120 plates in parallel,” explains Vander Ark. “Due to manufacturing tolerances, the actual stack of parts formed a large arc that leaned to one side, with the top part at a 25-degree angle. To overcome this, we programmed variable offsets in the robot tool angle and added additional compliance to the end-of-arm tool on the robot.”
Parts are assembled with screwdriving or pressing operations, and vision systems are used throughout the line to verify that components are present and have been correctly assembled.
A robot removes a brake component from a returnable plastic container. Machine vision guides the robot to the right pick location.
“By using multiple robots and 3D vision, this system increased safety for the workers and reduced manual labor,” says Vander Ark. “With the increased throughput and reduced labor requirements, this automated system provided the customer remarkable savings of time and money.”
The system is currently tooled to produce two variants of the brake assembly.