Robotive injection molding automation in fivefold design
In order to supply customers with several production plants on two continents just-in-time and in large quantities with plastic hybrid components, reliable systems are required on the one hand and, ideally, production is carried out on site in each case in order to keep and secure supply chains as short as possible.
KBS-Spritztechnik has to cope with exactly this task and has equipped five injection molding machines with robot automation systems from EGS Automation from Donaueschingen for this purpose.
Three of the systems are located at the company‘s home plant in Schonach, Germany, and two additional systems are located at the branch plant in Barrie, Ontario, Canada, which went into operation in 2017. The turnkey systems were developed and implemented by EGS Automation from Donaueschingen in the Black Forest-Baar district. The company has been active in the field of industrial automation since 1996 and has been using industrial robots for this purpose since 1999. Customers of EGS Automation benefit from the experience of more than 2,000 installed robots, which is why EGS calls itself robotive.
KBS Spritztechnik is integrated into the Burger Group and operates on the market in close cooperation with six other brands, which makes the group a very competent and powerful full-range supplier for customer-specific gear drive technology. KBS manufactures complex plastic parts for drive solutions as single- and multi-component combinations of metal and plastic or rubber.
Technical injection molded parts such as housings, gears, worms, spindles, racks or belt pulleys are just as much a part of the company‘s core competencies as the overmolding of contacts, ball bearings, shafts and gears made of metal. This leads us to the topic, the automated production of plastic hybrid components.The equipment is used to produce housings for mechatronic actuators, which are currently used in exhaust systems in vehicles with internal combustion engines as well as hybrid drives. The components are manufactured in 12 variants. Projects are also being implemented for future vehicles with alternative drive systems.
The manufacturing process is fully automated. From the provision of the insertion contacts as a stamped strip on a coil to the packaging of the tested finished products in ecologically sound, lightweight and recyclable reusable packaging. Three Yaskawa robots are installed in each system. Two small 6-axis robots that take care of precise contact provisioning. In addition, a larger robot that removes the finished parts from the injection mold and inserts the provided contacts, and then handles subsequent handling into an inspection unit and final packaging. Since there was a generation change at the robot manufacturer from the MH series to the GP series over the period from the delivery of the first system to the fifth system, different types are in use in the systems. The proven continuity and downward compatibility as well as continuity in the handling and programming of the Yaskawa robots made it possible to integrate the new generation into the existing plant concept without any problems. The automated production sequence begins with the unwinding of the punch strips from the coil with appropriate alignment and feeding into the punch-bending tool.