Automated Part Assembly Unit

Introduction

Vale Machinery Design was approached to design and develop a piece of equipment to assemble 4 injection moulded components together for an interiors application. Crucially, the design of the injection moulded components should be influenced by the move towards automated assembly.

An existing component was located and reviewed. The left image shows a simple explosion of the parts designed for automated assembly. Features remain similar to the existing parts, with added features such as rounded corners to aid with mechanically sorting the parts.

A first assembly was designed and built in Onshape which focussed on a single part of the assembly phase - orientating the main carrier body.

The motion of the individual carrier pieces to be sorted were considered carefully using basic hand calulcations, resulting in first pass pinion and ring gear size selection, DC motor torque and speed requirements.

The first proof of concept began to take shape with FDM printing taking the centre stage as a method for proving out the structure of the system. Folded sheet metal parts were not ordered at this point. Replaced with thin printed features and scrap wood, this is a low cost first pass, drawing confidence, or refinement where needed from the initial concept design.

In particular, the throw of the carriers is crucial here. An Arduino MCU, DC power supply and basic logic was used to vary motor speed and find an optimal velocity for the central drum to spin