Automated Assembly Machinery Users Listen Up!
When a company conceptualizes a piece of automation machinery to help with their production of a part they often have many choices in how to feed subparts into the machine. Sometimes the automated equipment is fed with items like:
Feeder bowls- Pneumatic grippers
- Hydraulic grippers
- Vacuum Cups
- Magnetic Cups
- Conveyors
- Robots
Usually, one technology will win out over the others based on what the geometry, weight, and material of the part. When it comes to lifting heavy or bulky items sometimes it is necessary to utilize multiple types of technology to move the part into a place that the tooling can assemble the subparts.
No matter what technology you use people often thinks that the job is far similar than it actually is. Have you been in this situation before? Usually, you only go down a path that turned out bad once, but the mind seems to fade the details of that bad experience over time and some people need to learn a lesson a second time. But why even get into the situation the first time? Many companies now are relying on out-sourced engineering to design and build a particular piece of equipment because they are the “Trusted Experts” in that field.
Nobody builds their own car for their commute to work. Nobody builds their own 6 axis robot. Nobody builds their own pneumatic cylinder. We all go to the experts that effectively do it time and time again. Beside nobody got time for designing their own anything these days when you can buy it. In my experience, many companies have realized that it is far less costly in the long run to pay experts rather than build something in-house.
I am sure you can name several people or companies you go to for various tasks or products when they are beyond your “cone of uncertainty”, to use the Weather Channels phrase. In the robotic end effector market, I trust Destaco to do this for #RGGroup and my customers. They really are the experts when it comes to material handling end effectors, utilizing pneumatics, hydraulics, electro-mechanical, or vacuum.
The Allegheny Fluid Power Division of #RGGroup has been a distributor of Destaco end effectors for over 20 years and has built a reputation for challenging projects. When I am approached by a customer to design and build a material handling system, I often utilize the Destaco Engineering department to help with finalizing the design because their team of engineers is fantastic at end of arm tooling design. The new and improved Accelerate line of custom material handling tools is not utilizing digital solutions and CAD to validate their design for the customer.