Despite the high standards of quality and competitiveness usually required in automotive parts and devices manufacturing, a lot of small sets incorporated in the car production lines are being manually assembled in countries where the human labour cost is lower. Nevertheless, the arrival of many international companies to these countries induced an increase in the labour cost, leading to the need of automatizing the manufacturing and assembling processes, to keep the company competitive. This work was based on an international company challenge to improve the quality and competitiveness of a manufacturing cell devoted to assembling devices for car windshield wipers. At the moment, this cell operates manually, using only a press machine to crimp a metallic disc on a polymeric gear. The objective was to provide a drastic improvement by means of automation, removing the two workers that currently work in the cell; however, the biggest challenge was to design a fully automated cell able to assemble all the sets of the same product family based on twenty-seven different polymeric gears and ten different kinds of metallic discs. The problem was overcome by identifying the geometric similarities and using the best automation solutions, regarding the maximum budget pointed out by the company. The final result is a new fully automated equipment that enables the assembling of twenty-seven different combinations of metallic discs and polymeric gears for car windshield wipers devices, allowing quick setup and both quality control and separation of devices at the end of the assembly process.

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Development of a Novel Assembling Process for Small Automotive Mechanical Devices

  • Rúben D. F. S. Costa,
  • Naiara P. V. Sebbe,
  • André F. V. Pedroso,
  • Marta L. S. Barbosa,
  • Maria T. R. Pereira

摘要

Despite the high standards of quality and competitiveness usually required in automotive parts and devices manufacturing, a lot of small sets incorporated in the car production lines are being manually assembled in countries where the human labour cost is lower. Nevertheless, the arrival of many international companies to these countries induced an increase in the labour cost, leading to the need of automatizing the manufacturing and assembling processes, to keep the company competitive. This work was based on an international company challenge to improve the quality and competitiveness of a manufacturing cell devoted to assembling devices for car windshield wipers. At the moment, this cell operates manually, using only a press machine to crimp a metallic disc on a polymeric gear. The objective was to provide a drastic improvement by means of automation, removing the two workers that currently work in the cell; however, the biggest challenge was to design a fully automated cell able to assemble all the sets of the same product family based on twenty-seven different polymeric gears and ten different kinds of metallic discs. The problem was overcome by identifying the geometric similarities and using the best automation solutions, regarding the maximum budget pointed out by the company. The final result is a new fully automated equipment that enables the assembling of twenty-seven different combinations of metallic discs and polymeric gears for car windshield wipers devices, allowing quick setup and both quality control and separation of devices at the end of the assembly process.