Tail Light Bar Screw Driving by JAKA Zu 7 Cobots
About the Company
A developer and manufacturer of automotive lighting, capable of producing standard and specialist lighting products.
Company’s Challenges
In the final production stages of a particular tail light bar, one of the company’s processes involves securing structural and functional elements together, to create a bar that stretches the width of a car, integrating plastic light casing with a metal rim.
This involves first aligning the two parts, and then driving a series of heavy-duty screws. The company felt that the screw driving part of the process was ripe for automation, given its repetitive yet precise nature.
The challenge was to find a robot that could work alongside a human worker, who would be completing the first part of the process, and that could also easily be reprogrammed to match the screw driving layouts of different tail bars, for different models of car. For these reasons, traditional industrial robots weren’t ideal, so the company turned to cobots.
Solution
With the help of a professional cobot integrator, the company installed two JAKA Zu 7 cobots to complete the screw driving task.
- Thanks to their compact size and relatively small weight, they were able to be mounted upside down in a cabinet, meaning the tail light bars could be secured below, with holes facing up.
- The human worker now completes the first alignment stage, then places the bar into the cabinet, where the cobots are supplied with screws, and go to work on supplied parts automatically.
- The worker doesn’t need to be concerned about safety, as the cobots’ in-built collision detection will cause it to cease operations the moment an unexpected force is met by any part of the robot arm.
Results
- The company successfully automated the repetitive, dull and physically demanding process of screw driving. As a result, the turnover of staff was reduced, leading to a reduction in the money and time spent on training.
- There was a significant increase in both the volume and quality of production. The cobots are able to operate 24/7, without error, which led to a 35% increase in the number of units processed per day.
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Info
Address
JAKA Robotics
Siemensstrasse 2 – 4,
90766 Fuerth
Germany