What is our succession plan? That is the question one of our customer’s asked when faced with the request to triple their output on a particular product! This customer, being a the small to medium sized enterprise, had to do something or potentially lose business! They realized they had to automate this assembly process, and quickly. While this company had some understanding of automation, their core business was stamping. Because of this, they decided to hire the ‘experts in assembly’, ASG Automation.

The process that they intended to automate was an “add value” process; wherein they joined several stamped products together with (14) nuts and (14) bolts. This process, done by hand, took

Standard ASG AX-30 Turntable System

an operator 90 seconds to complete. Based on that cycle time, the company valiantly produced 1 million assemblies/yr. in a single shift.

ASG Automation was tasked with taking this process from 1 million assemblies/year to 3 million assemblies/year! The custom solution included a robot equipped with (7) nut runners and an indexing turntable. The machine was complete with safety devices, a central programmable logic controller, and a human machine interface. The operation of the system was as follows: the operators loaded parts, the table indexed, and the robot moved in and fastened down (2) sets of (7) nuts. This solution was based off of the ASG AX-30 turntable automation system. The AX-30 system is designed for optimal efficiency. While the operator is loading new components, the robot is simultaneously assembling the presented components via the turntable. This leads to almost zero downtime for the machine providing peak throughput.

This system provided a complete, integrated, turnkey solution to the challenge of increasing production to meet customer demand. This ASG automated solution produced a new cycle time of 20 seconds/assembly. The result was a 430% increase in production!

To learn more about the AX-30 Turntable system, visit: https://asg-jergens.com/automation/ax-20-ax-30-and-ax-40/. All of ASG’s automated solutions can be found at https://asg-jergens.com/automation/

ASG is an RIA Certified Robot Integrator.