Total Tooling — a Victorian manufacturer with three factories and 80+ staff — nylon-coated components by hand, flame-heating each part and then dipping it into nylon powder.
Re-engineering the process before automating it
Reproducing the hand method with a robot would have locked its limits in.
- Manual flame-heating and dipping was slow
- Coating quality varied with the operator's judgement
- Burn risk was constant with an open flame and hand dipping
- The process was redesigned rather than copied
Two heating stations and a carousel
The cell heats and dips at the same time rather than one after the other.
- Carousel and two heating stations, so heating and dipping run in parallel
- Robot controller manages heat timing across the stations
- Dip depth executed exactly and repeatably by the robot
Built by one in-house team
Every discipline on the cell came from Mobile Automation.
- Mechanical design and fabrication
- Robot integration
- Electrical and controls
The results
- Throughput increased through parallel heating and dipping
- Heating controlled and repeatable, and dip depth exact
- Consistent coating quality part to part
- The operator out of the flame-and-dip loop and freed for value-adding work
This is what “robot solutions, not robots in boxes” means — the win came from process re-engineering, and the robot made it possible. Explore robotic solutions