Development of a Robot-Based Handling System for a High Precision Manufacturing Cell

Automated production of micro-fluidic devices (bio-MEMS) is performed in a dedicated manufacturing cell, comprising six precision manufacturing workstations and a handling system. The desired flexibility of the manufacturing cell is highly dependent on the handling system, whose design and implementation are reported on in this paper. This comprises specially designed part carriers that are hosted on a spigot both at each workstation and in a central storage cabinet, an industrial robot that loads and unloads the carriers by means of a custom designed gripper and a central controller commanding the movements and transfers in a single part or batch mode. Besides accuracy and reliability of the handling system, special emphasis in designing it, is given to safety.