Mini pneumatic presses and hand held special tools

Built a series of very small pneumatic presses and hand held special tools for an automotive company. Operators needed their fatigue reduced for jobs like circlip insertion, bearing pressing, bimetallic biush pressing, diesel pump priming, pneumatic clamps for a sub assembly work, fixtures, etc. Very small work but interesting as it involved a lot of study into how the operator assembled a particular component, how he held it, how the component was placed in his work bench, ergonomics of that particular component when it was placed in the automobile for example-the priming tool for diesel pump was to to be used after the pump was installed in the vehicle so holding the tool while priming was being done was required. We had to 'fix' the tool on the vehicle's exhaust while priming and for this we had to measure to take measurements while the vehicle was moving in the assembly line.

Gear dispensing system

An indexing table with a pneumatic arm for "pushing" out the bottom most gear in the stacks. Gears are stacked one over the other on aN indexing plate powered by an induction motor. An OMRON proximity sensor is used for stopping each stack in front of the pneumatic arm so bottom most gear is pushed out every time the pneumatic arm operated. The top of each stack has a plate with internal gear tooth cut in it. This ensures only that particular gear type can be stacked in that particular row.

Tyre tube valve auto pick and place system

An XY table+ pick and place system combo for a tube/tyre manufacturer. Installed in their tube extruder line. A tray with valves placed in a 11x11 matrix is placed on a stepper motor controlled XY table. A pneumatic powered rack moves a pinion connected to a pick and place arm. Arm has a FESTO pneumatic gripper with custom fingers which have grooved cut in them for grip. Zeron welds used, all machined components mounted on a CNC machined plated.

Cashew sorter

A miniature prototype of a cashew sorting system. After roasting cashews are required to be sorted based on the level of roasting. Cashews are made to fall on a Rockwell servo operated indexing table. A Cognex vision camera "sees" the cashews and a software signals a simple pneumatic SOV to blow the cashews into their respective collection boxes.

Hydraulic Cylinder assembly workstation

Complete workstation for assembly of a tractor's hydraulic cylinder. Assembly consisted of hydraulic cylinder, piston with O ring and a circlip. Consisted of custom designed input trolleys, bins, pneumatic presses, fixtures, poke yoke systems, output trolleys, etc. Faced challenges due to high variations in the dimensions of hydraulic cylinder which was because unfinished sand cast exterior. Detailed pre design study ensured the operator never had to lift the component at any stage of assembly including when transferring from station to output trolley.

Cam shaft press

Simple pneumatic press for insertion of circlip and key into automotive engine camshaft. Faced challenges  in orienting perfectly round camshaft for key insertion. Used Janatics pneumatics and Omron PLCs.