General Industrial Machinery
CPA
Sputtering Automation. Ink-jet printer manufacturing. Factory system
consists of a central loading machine, roll around-carts, and sputtering system
loaders. Automated docking station accepts roll-around carts and loads it with
30 pallets of 4 glass plates each. Operator then rolls cart to sputtering
systems, where cart is again docked there and pallets unloaded automatically
into sputtering chamber. Ultra reliability and cleanliness is imperative, as
sputtered components become the ink jet head active component. Class 100 clean
room.
 Cigarette Tax
Indicia Marking System. High speed conveyorized line accepts sealed
cigarette cartons, opens them, puts a label on each of the 10 cigarette packs,
applies an encrypted unique 3D bar code to each pack using ink jet printers,
applies individual strips of hot glue and seals up the carton. Nominal speed is
100 cartons per minute. Provides an alternate tax indicia other than the hot
transfer tax stamp decals. The new indicia provides tracking and verification
for use by government taxing agencies. Reduces tax fraud and
counterfeiting. Smart conveyor line eliminates carton damage. Stand alone
version, as well as version designed for replacement and integration into
existing tax stamping line.
RFID Antenna Assembly System. Singulates
unique RFID chips from Kapton tape and places onto metallic screen printed
Mylar, then applies Tampoprinted metallic ink at connection points. Handles
input and output heavy reels of Mylar film and micro-positions antennas for chip
placement. Selectable product types. Anti-static construction. Keyence PLC
controlled.
 Aqueous
Cleaning Line. Machining Industry. Conveyor line slowly runs parts through a
high pressure, steam cleaning process, followed by a heated air blowoff tunnel.
Tight control of heated water and cleaning detergent, along with volume buffer
holding tanks. Mechanisms at each end of the line orient parts correctly.
Recirculating filters strip away metals and all contaminants.
Teleoperated Maintenance Equipment Robotics (TAMER). Construction
equipment. Commercialized product-packaged hydraulic and electrical control of
heavy construction equipment using computerized RF remote controllers.
Controllers use virtual operator cab and walk-around backpacks. Full integration
of all tractor features and operations, redundant safety systems. Designed to
protect operators in extreme conditions such as clearing mud slides, avalanches,
floods and road hazards. Handles extreme blizzard conditions to high heat. In use by
CalTrans.
Machining
Center for Water Jet Cutter. Machine tool industry. A heavy duty overhead
gantry system for full control of a water jet cutting and milling head. High
power servo motors on planar X-Y axis moves at speeds to 250ips using
computerized path contouring NC package. Z axis controllable. Work envelope is 4
foot square. Fully enclosed boxed cell uses plastic shields, vortex vacuum port,
and exhaust fans to control water spray and steam generation during cutting. All
mechanisms and ways are boxed and pressurized to eliminate water penetration and
corrosion. Unit measures 6 feet square and 10 feet tall. Internal steel bucket
holds 3 cubic feet of ball bearings, along with replaceable work surface grates.
Superstructure of welded 4 inch square tubular steel, 0.5 inch thick. Frame
milled whole to obtain extreme positional tolerances. Laser interferometer
measurements of mechanical accuracy better than 1.0 mil over work surface.
Designed and produced as an OEM product for a major water jet cutting supplier.
 Electronic
Key Trimming System. Machine tool industry. Complete computerized routing
machining system for trimming and cutting printed circuit traces on credit-card
sized electronic keys used in advanced security systems. Multi-frequency keys
trimmed mechanically in real time while measurements being taken. Four motorized
X-Y-Z high speed router motor stages selectively trims printed circuit coils
with 1.0 mil accuracy. Mechanical scrub cleaning, machine vision, bar code
tracking, conveyor indexing, flip stations and frequency verification
integrated.
 Game
Pad Calibration and Test. PC accessories industry. Fixture designed to
calibrate and test game pad devices for computer games and mouse emulation.
Systems move and analyzes a new game pad and computes calibration settings. Also
performs full testing of this USB device in a production environment. See
Microsoft SideWinder for product description.
Electronic Key Punch and Form Tool. Machine tool industry.
Computerized machining system accepts credit-card sized security keys in a
stack, singulates onto a walking beam track, mills 6 precision variable depth
holes, then die punches reverse side to make indentation in fiberglass printed
circuit material for SMD capacitor placement. High speed gang-drill head
integrated. Fast throughput.
 Sealant
Kitting Line. Aerospace industry. Computerized epoxy filling and labeling
line for a Northwest producer of commercial aircraft. Conveyorized line accepts
plastic, glass or metal bottles to be filled on a rotating product entry table,
then singulates bottles through each station. First station injects a measured
amount of epoxy compound into the bottle. Second station takes vibratory bowl
fed plastic inserts and picks and places the insert into the top of the bottle.
Third station fills insert with second epoxy compound. Bottles pass through
capper then through an ink-jet printer and label applicator. Filled, sealed and
labeled bottles retrieved from rotating exit table, at rate of 12 per minute.
Line is 60 feet long and incorporates many existing process machines. Fully
computer monitored for loss of product, equipment jams and failures, empty input
areas, QA inspection at each station. Configurable by customer for many
different bottle sizes, as well as various epoxies, sealants, caps, inserts and
labels. High reliability required based on use of end product as structural
sealant in commercial aircraft. Fiber optic sensors and sealed motors
implemented throughout the explosive fumes areas. System UL and safety approved.
Tape Cartridge Production Line. Digital data tape media industry. Fully
automated line accepts stacks of flat, blank, tape bases (plates) and singulates
onto central linear conveyor line. Transfer automation at 11 stations swaps
plates into sequential die presses. Each die press has bowl feeders and
automated pin singulators to install a single pin perpendicularly into the
plate. Install in Korea.
Tape Cartridge Gauging System. Tape media. Automated measurement gauging
system to dimensionally check critical CTC3480 tape cartridge mechanical
measurements. Uses sensitive LVDT technology to contact plastic cartridge and
gain high resolution measurements at the rate of 3 seconds per cartridge. Linked
to A/D converter in PC AT control unit. Graphical CRT display of dimensions as
well as pass/fail capability. Line printer output for SPC database tracking.
Conversions of archived database into spreadsheet protocol for SPC use.
CTape Cartridge Packer. Tape media. 3480 tape cartridges are
accumulated from a conveyor at a rate of 60 per minute and up stacked into a
pre-chamber. On the tenth upstack stroke, the 10-stack is captured and swung
down into a shrink wrap machine. After shrink wrap, the 10-pack is placed 3 to a
carton in an integrated cartoning machine.
Printed Circuit Board Robotic Test System. PCB test industry. A double
in-line gantry system with each gantry servicing four PCB bed-of-nail testers. A
dual line conveyor transports failed or passed circuit cards to failure analysis
or shipping. Tracks PCB's using bar code scanner.
Balloon Valve Handler. Commercial children's balloon manufacturer.
Handler accepts rolls of plastic internal balloon air valves, indexes sheet,
then precision cuts single valve. Presents valve by vacuum pick and place to
heat-staking machine for inclusion into balloon.
 Cleaning
Bath. Recirculating, temperature controlled fluorocarbon bath for cleaning
electronics components. Timer, precise +-1 degree temperature control of liquid.
Heated tank and pumps mounted below surface. Vapor recovery and recondensing
back into tank.
3D Mold Modeler Machine. Toy manufacturing. Machine controls an X-Y-Z
overhead gantry to follow a 3D AutoCAD file to create wax molds, in a thin,
layer by layer buildup. Resulting 3D molds match the intended 3D CAD image, and
are used to form molds for children's plastic toys.
Floppy Diskette Primary Folder. Floppy media. Fully automated machinery
to fold and seal vinyl floppy diskette jackets. Sealing via selected heat stake pattern or by
adhesive. For high-speed 5.25" and 8" diskette production. Folds
all homopolymer and copolymer vinyls, as well as Lexans and CPVC's. Liquid
cooled folding bars. Heat temperature control of vinyl folding within +-1
degree C. LED alphanumeric display, thumbwheel timing parameter set-ups,
full diagnostics and RS232 capability.
Floppy Diskette End Flap Folder. Floppy media. Fully automated machinery to
fold and seal vinyl floppy diskette jacket end flaps after the cookie
media has been inserted. Production speeds of
11-15 jackets per minute.
Floppy Diskette Jacket Inspection Station. Floppy media. Completely
automated electro-optical and mechanical inspection system for dimensionally
checking floppy diskette jackets. Replaces manual drop gauges to precisely
measure drop time. Uses custom fiber optics to achieve very high
resolution useful for QA lab. LCD display and compact packaging. RS232 interface and package
available for data tracking and SPC analysis using external PC.
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