A medical assembly machine was requested by a well-known blue-chip company. Our client required a system to automatically assemble a medical device (within a cleanroom) comprising of a series of vessels and an enclosure which encapsulated the vessels to provide a securing frame around them. In addition to the medical assembly, the machine was also required to inspect bar coding on the devices and feed them into a packaging machine.
To design and manufacture a machine to assemble a multi-part medical device. The system was required to accept the assembly components from infeed conveyors. The option for bowl feeding of the product was not required.
The device assembly had many permutations and required a control system that would allow the operator to quickly change from assembling a variety of model variants.
It was also a requirement for the system to integrate with an existing final packaging machine.
• Automatic in-feed of components on conveyors.
• Ability to handle different assembly configurations.
• Full tracking of product through the system
• Output into existing packaging machine
The system was based around a mechanical indexing precision link conveyor. The conveyor was tooled with machined nests to accept the variety of assembly build-ups. Four infeed conveyors were used to transfer the components into the machine. The leading component was then escaped and transferred into a nest on the indexing conveyor. Although located, the parts were not assembled until later in the process. To allow for different placement positions (different products), servo pick and place units were used. The assembled components were then pressed together, with finally assembly and bar code inspection taking place prior to the device being loaded onto a packaging machine input conveyor. Reject parts were removed and placed into a segregated area.
