Process Equipment

A major office furniture manufacturer commissioned this system to produce a cured edge integral to a work surface. It is capable of X, Y, and theta axis coordinated motion and two part urethane mixing and flow rate control. The bed can handle up to 5 foot by 8 foot worksurfaces. An Allen-Bradley brand Computer Numerical Control supervises all functions of the system and interfaces with a stand alone urethane component chemical feed system.

This is an very unusual, highly customized press. Our customer had very specific, well defined goals which we met. The press is completely electromechanical (it has no hydraulics whatsoever), and its stroke is programmable in units of 0.0001 inches. It was designed to produce very precise "setting" (the sideways bending) of stainless steel saw teeth for medical instruments.

A second tier automotive supplier needed to assemble a family of mirrors, including right and left pairs. We combined easily manufactured, quick-change molded urethane part nests, an automatic screw feeder, and a two axis X-Y slide and computer numerical control to create a flexible solution for our customer. Part program recipe selection completes the requirements for a rapidly reconfigurable flexible automation system.

Ever wonder how wire screen is made? This machine stretches a wire mesh to lock the long wires and the cross wires together. The system uses a hitch-like puller to create very precise percentage stretches. The stretched section is then rewound, pulling a new, unstretched mesh into place for stretching. Part of the elegance of this solution is that the equipment was made more precise and compact simultaneously through careful design.

We were approached by a large office furniture company to produce a simple, but very flexible, machine to punch holes in office cubicle base moldings for utilities. The key to productivity for this process is the systems capability to be quickly adjusted for a variety of base molding lengths with different hole locations. "Bump" tooling combined with indexable die pairs does the trick.

Three Axis Programmable Urethane Fill System