Those of us who’ve had the pleasure of putting together a child’s bicycle late on Christmas Eve can appreciate all that goes into the assembly process. Now imagine automating that process. No, there wouldn’t be any eggnog clouding the assembler’s wits, but the fact remains that even the most rudimentary products contain a variety of manufactured components that must be inserted, threaded, welded, glued or otherwise joined in some way to make a functioning assembly.
Rick Blake knows all about it. As the owner and founder of St. Joseph, Mich.-based Edgewater Automation LLC, Blake has been building automated assembly systems for most of his life. And, thanks to a recent jump in customer demand, not to mention technology developments that are changing the way he and his competitors design equipment, the future for Edgewater’s team of several hundred employees looks promising.
“We’ve seen a big resurgence in reshoring over the past couple of years,” he says. “Most of our customers look to us when they need equipment to support their higher volume production needs but don’t want to go overseas for it.”
Edgewater’s customer base is comprised of at least four distinct markets: automotive, consumer goods, energy and life sciences. It wasn’t always that way, however. Early in the company’s 22-year history, Blake found himself in a situation that is, unfortunately, far too common with many small manufacturers—putting too many eggs in one customer basket. Edgewater quickly moved to diversify, and now produces a broad array of assembly, test and packaging systems, and has a strong presence in machining and fabricating.
“Whether it’s building batteries or valves for washing machines and refrigerators, we cover a lot of territory,” Blake says.
When asked to weigh in on the reasons behind the reshoring trend, Blake’s response was unsurprising. “There will always be a call for making certain kinds of products in low-cost countries, but when you’re dependent on suppliers that are far away and therefore out of your control, many OEMs are finding it too risky,” he says. “There’s also a push for greater sustainability, a goal that’s better served by not having to ship products halfway around the world. It’s because of these factors that we’ve found a growing number of companies willing to invest in machinery that allows them to make and assemble their goods here in North America.”
Another factor is labor, or, rather, the lack thereof. Not only has this chronic problem affected Edgewater’s customers, thus driving up demand for automated assembly systems, it also impacts Blake’s ability to hire the skilled programmers, technicians and system designers needed for Edgewater’s work. Like many manufacturers, the company is taking steps to address this chronic problem.
“We work closely with First Robotics (founded by Dean Kamen in 1989 to inspire students in engineering and technology), even down into the junior high school levels, trying to help awareness of the employment potential and rewarding careers in this space,” Blake says. “I’ve been doing this for 45 years and it’s been a wonderful field for me, which is why I’m excited to be a cheerleader for automation. I strongly feel that if we can get more young people interested in what we’re doing, it would be a great thing for our country, our industry and, most importantly, for them.”
Nick Maillis, engineering manager for Taylor-Winfield Technologies Inc. of Youngstown, Ohio, is similarly enthusiastic. “We’ve been in business since 1882 and have produced approximately 52,000 machines,” he says. “Our expertise has long been in resistance welding and we were one of the first companies in the world to master the technology, but we also have a strong presence in automated assembly systems and often blend the two into a single, integrated solution.”
As with Edgewater Automation, Taylor-Winfield has a long history with the automotive market. But as Director of Marketing Katie Denno points out, the 100-employee company has since expanded into aerospace, medical, firearms, mining and much more. Taylor-Winfield also belongs to an umbrella organization—the Brilex Group—which Denno says gives the company great flexibility to meet customer demands. “If we’re overloaded or come across an opportunity that doesn’t exactly fit our capabilities, we can send it to one of our sister companies.”
The two agree with what Blake said about increased robotic use in this sector, but as Maillis is quick to note, not every automation solution requires a droid. In one recent example, a bus manufacturer needed to spot weld the seat frames in 15 places and do so very quickly; using robots for this job would have either been too slow or prohibitively expensive. “We automated that application by incorporating a series of cylinder-driven welding guns,” he says. “The pieces of cut tubing went into a fixture, the guns slid into place, fire, fire, fire and twenty seconds later, the assembly was complete.”
Knowing when to use what technology is crucial in this industry, he adds. “Taylor-Winfield has executed multiple robotic applications successfully with a variety of robot manufacturers, although in this example, the customer needed high throughput but had a limited budget. And while a robot might be a good solution to load the individual pieces into the fixture and take the completed part out afterward, a lower-tech solution was the most effective, given the requirements.”
Denno seconds this statement. “There are many smart people out there who can put together the different puzzle pieces needed to automate an assembly process, but if you don’t work within the project scope and, more importantly, stand behind the finished product, then you won’t be successful in the long term.”
“Automated assembly covers a very wide range of products, from complete motor vehicles to the Schrader valves used to fill the tires. Each of us works at the smaller end of this spectrum, say anything less than half a meter across.”
This statement comes from Bill Damian, vice president of Buffoli North America Inc., Holland, Mich., which designs, sells, and services the CNC machine tools used to make the many parts found in these assembled products. His equipment lineup includes bar and coil-fed rotary transfer machines, flexible manufacturing systems, multi-spindle lathes and multi-station mill/turn machines. Most boast a unique configuration designed around a customer’s part geometry and volume requirements, but are also modular, so they are easy to reconfigure as these requirements change. And unlike most machines in this high-volume realm, they’re also CNC rather than PLC-controlled, making setup faster and easier.
Italian partner company Beocom Srl’s Twins brand of automated assembly, filling and testing machines serves as an essential counterpart to Buffoli’s machining capabilities. “A large percentage of the parts coming off our machines are used in an assembled product of some kind, whether it’s something as simple as sliding a series of O-rings onto a plumbing component or putting together half a dozen or more parts for the control valve in a blood analysis machine,” he adds.
Ivan Omodei is a product manager at Twins. He concurs with Damian on the need for as much standardization as possible when designing an assembly machine and takes much the same approach. A modular, CNC design means far less re-engineering when changing between products. There’s interchangeability of components, both within the machine and with others like it, and spare parts are easier and faster to procure when equipment construction is based on a common platform. “It also speeds delivery of the machine while helping to reduce costs,” Omodei says.
Twins takes advantage of recent technology developments to make the assembly process more capable, more cost effective, more flexible or, in most cases, all of the above. One example of this is vision-equipped robots—rather than manufacturing dedicated fixtures or bowl mechanisms to feed parts into the assembly machine, a simple conveyor presents them to a robot, which can “see” the component and adjust gripper orientation accordingly to place it into the starting position.
“That’s not to say that traditional mechanisms like bowl feeders don’t have their place—because they do—but advanced robotics and CNC controllers provide numerous capabilities that would otherwise be difficult or even impossible to achieve,” Omodei adds. “The pick-and-place operation just described is one excellent use case, but there are also tasks like driving screws to a specific torque or using lasers to measure part positions during the assembly process. Again, it brings benefits all around.”
Speaking of robots, FANUC America Corp. of Rochester Hills, Mich., is another strong player in the automated assembly game, although not in the same manner as the other companies discussed.
“There are huge numbers of custom, semi-automated assembly machines in service today,” says Jerry Perez, executive director of global accounts. “For instance, you might have the situation where an operator places some machined pieces in a jig or fixture, and pushes a couple of buttons to actuate a pressing or welding operation. Given the current labor shortage, many companies are coming to us for help with retrofitting machines like these with a robot or cobot, which can very easily place the parts, clamp the fixture, push the start button and remove the finished part.”
That said, Perez reiterates the comment of Taylor-Winfield’s Maillis: Robots are often not the best choice for the types of high volume, fast throughput expected of many fixed-automation systems. “If I need to install a screw in a component at high volumes, I’m probably not going to give the robot a screwdriver,” Perez says. “That operation would more likely be performed at a separate, dedicated station on a dial machine, which can accomplish this task and many others far more quickly.”
Perez places robotic participation in the assembly process into three broad buckets. There’s the retrofit of the semi-automated machines, a use not all that different from the CNC machine tending for which robots are currently enjoying high demand. There’s also the higher-volume, lower variability work that is ideal for full automation, where robots have begun taking an active role in machine tending.
Somewhere between these two, automated assembly machine builders are making robots active partners in hybrid solutions—driving screws, applying glue, popping rivets and inserting one component into another. “Here, there’s sufficient volume and manageable variation to justify robotic automation, but not necessarily the fixed tooling that would be needed for the production quantities seen in automotive or consumer products,” Perez says.
When asked how manufacturers can determine which path is the most cost-effective, he offers advice that at first seems cryptic.
“Seven seconds. Any cycle time less than this typically means they’ll either need a lot more robots or a dedicated assembly machine,” Perez explains. “Granted, using a simple target figure like this overlooks what is admittedly a complex situation, but that seems to be the magical cycle time at which applications tip in favor of justifying higher automation levels.”
Proponents also stress the need for adherence to sound design-for-assembly (DFA) principles. As with its alter ego, design for manufacturing, DFA is an engineering practice that too many overlook, resulting in higher costs and greater complexity for assembly machines and finished products alike.
Josh Carlson, technical product manager for robotics and automation at Plano, Texas-based Siemens Digital Industries Software, has a great deal to say on this and other manufacturing topics, not the least of which is that a fair number of equipment providers still rely on Excel, tribal knowledge and paper-based documentation to build their wares—practices that are both inefficient and error-prone.
“Automated assembly machine builders must answer many questions,” he says. “What’s the best design for a given assembly process? How will we interface with the customer’s other production processes and software systems? How can we verify that the machine will work as intended when deployed at the customer’s facility and continue to perform at that level millions of cycles later?”
Each of these questions goes to the heart of any machine design project, he notes. Each is also best answered through the use of integrated design and manufacturing software, advanced simulation tools and reliance on the digital thread.
“Consider simulation,” Carlson says. “If you have a digital twin of the machine early on in the design process, it allows you to evaluate everything about that machine—its load-bearing capabilities, the sensors and motion control and other electronics, its conveyance systems and operator ergonomics—long before you’ve begun ordering the components, hardware and metal needed to build it.”
Simulation software also addresses another growing customer requirement, one that Edgewater Automation, Taylor-Winfield, Buffoli, Twins and FANUC all mentioned: the call for remote control, monitoring and data collection capabilities, aka the Industrial Internet of Things, or IIoT.
“Automated assembly machines were already hugely complex,” Carlson continues. “Now we’re seeing artificial intelligence and the IIoT enter the picture, which is why having an integrated design and manufacturing platform is critical. Without it, costs and lead times go up while long-term performance tends to be less predictable.”
Carlson closes by pointing out one significant difference between machine building and other forms of manufacturing: There’s little opportunity for physical prototyping with the former. Only through virtual prototyping—building a digital twin, in other words—can the electrical, mechanical, software, programming and integration teams responsible for success verify their designs are optimized to meet project requirements.
“The contracts for these machines usually state a target cycle time,” he says. “Fail to meet it and you’re in serious trouble.”
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