Satisfied customers, thanks to automation from Festo
Ready for action faster with standard products
Family-owned British company Harwin Plc specializes in high-performance plug connectors. The demands in this market are increasing just as quickly as miniaturization is advancing. In the meantime, products have achieved pin spacing of just 1.25 mm, yet have to withstand innumerable plugging operations, in some cases under extreme conditions. Harwin produces them in greatly differing variants.
The new Gecko production line needs to be correspondingly flexible, with the highest levels of reliability, precision, repetition accuracy and cost efficiency. The solution was a modular, scalable automation concept from Festo. The advantages include faster production lines, simplified commissioning and easy maintenance.
High-precision dispensing of cast resin
Specially developed cast resins keep electronic components protected from dirt and moisture. Applying this material efficiently requires highly developed engineering skills, as it involves complex curving motions in the tightest of spaces. Not only that, but the motions required change continuously, as production batches in the electronics industry are typically very small. This means the machines have to be reconfigured quickly, easily, and economically.
The world's leading provider of these kinds of micro dispenser systems is bdtronic GmbH in Weikersheim in southwest Germany. As the company values high flexibility and optimum space utilization as well as absolute precision and process reliability, it selected a complete solution from Festo for its "mini-dis" product: with the compact industrial robot YXMx at its core.
New machine concept for selective soldering
Sensors are sense organs for (semi) automatic vehicles and are becoming more and more widespread. These sensitive probes need to be tough, which is why they come in a protective housing. Individual soldering operations have to be executed inside the housing. IPTE Factory Automation n.v., from Belgium, are experts in the field of industrial automation and together with Festo develop systems for corresponding tasks.
The new machine concept for selective soldering of sensors directly within the housing makes it possible to achieve the required high levels of process quality and reproducibility, as well as tremendous production speeds, at cycle times of less than three seconds.
Dispensing with different viscosities
Precisely gluing smartphone displays, applying thermal paste or gluing micro cameras in place are just a selection of the adhesive processes that represent the dosing and dispensing competencies of ViscoTec. Now the company has brought out cartridge applicator units designed for exact and clean feeding of adhesives, pastes and silicones of different viscosities, supported by a pneumatic control module supplied by Festo right to the ViscoTec assembly line as a ready-to-install module.
Advantages of standardization and modularization
The math is simple: money saved in R&D, engineering and software programming shows up later in the plus column. Furthermore, your purchasing department profits from economies of scale. And you can offer your solutions more quickly and flexibly. Torsten Schulz, head Global Key Account Management for the electronics and assembly sector, demonstrates where the greatest potential savings can be found on the basis of a sample calculation:
Your savings potential, in black and white
Significant factors in determining your success are your expenses for design engineering and the products used: If you concentrate your efforts on standardized products and solutions, you can boost your profit directly by 20% to 30%. This has also been demonstrated by a study of the machinery industry in Germany by the VDMA.
Download the study "Future of German mechanical engineering" (PDF)