Improve cost efficiency by adopting an automatic laser drilling system (Part 1)

RNA Automation was established in Birmingham, UK in 1986 and has grown to become a reputable manufacturer of equipment and parts in the region. The company operates in a specialized automation engineering field, providing mechanical products serving a wide range of industries such as cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, electronics, food and metalworking, with seven production facilities across Europe and North America and sales network globally.

Recently, RNA received an order with a request to design an automated laser drilling process integrated with a mass quality control system for plastic molding products. After surveying the factory, RNA experts came up with a solution to synchronize, automate the entire operation cycle of the chain and combine the vibrating hopper feeder, robot vision system, beam system. transfer, laser drilling systems, vision test stations… to enforce more complex settings.

Customer requirements:

• Automation solutions must be applied flexibly in all stages of the cycle
• Minimize waiting times between cycle buffers, fast feeding and checking finished products
• Bore diameter is only allowed to range from 15um to 50um. At the end of the process, the position and hole size of each product must be 100% checked
• Improve cost efficiency by improving productivity and reducing waste

The solution of RNA Automation

The following figure shows a summary of the functional map of each device in the production cycle. This particular configuration uses one laser drill station and three camera stations to verify the accuracy of each operation:

To begin this process, the material is transferred to a robot with sensor vision using an RNA vibrating hopper feed system. Thanks to the sensor system, the feeding process can be done quickly with high accuracy and requires no human intervention. On the other hand, the vibrating hopper feeder of RNA is also designed in a funnel-shaped design with low height, which makes the raw materials easily loaded by lifting the plate, pre-sorting and putting to the top without adding any irregularities technique until they reach the desired height.

The robots then select the suitable machined object by themselves to position it correctly before transferring it to the transfer beam. After the material has been sorted, the transfer beam acts as an oscillating lever that rotates on the center shaft to create translational movements. This is a fairly simple but highly effective design because the same linear movements are repeated at each joint to help fully utilize the kinetic energy.

(To  be continued)

Productivity and Quality Office