Wire harness assembly:
fanucamerica.com/industrial-solutions/manufacturing-applications/assembly-robots
Clear Automation developed this fully automated robotic assembly system for electrical wire harnesses; The system consists of four overhead-mounted FANUC LR Mate 200iD robots, a FANUC M-10iA robot, as well as custom winding, wire handling, and connecting mechanisms that produce six different harnesses ranging from 20 to 200 feet in length. It produces six electrical harness assemblies per minute. Some portions of the process are considered sensitive intellectual property and are not shown in this video.
An LR Mate 200iD robot picks new wire from the decoiler, clamps it into place in a winding head, and the machine winds the wire to the appropriate length as selected by the operator through the HMI. Once the appropriate length is coiled, the wire cutters snip the wire, and the LR Mate handles the end of the wire back into a clamp within the winding head so that the coil doesn’t unravel. One LR Mate is responsible for two turntables that include six coil winding heads. After the coils are wrapped in plastic, they are moved to the FANUC M-10iA robot. The FANUC M-10iA robot picks a coil and presents it to a heater.
As previously mentioned, the system handles six different lengths of wire assemblies. Therefore each pallet needs to be automatically adjusted to fit the proper coil size. To do this, a height sensor relays information to a servo, which sets the appropriate pallet height for each individual coil.
The pallets of coil move down a conveyor to two LR Mate 200iDs, designated for deploying inner and outer wire ends. The wire ends will eventually be cut to length, stripped of insulation, straightened, and inserted into connectors.
The coils then move to an inspection station. The vision system checks the wires for length, straightness, and shape. The coil is also checked for continuity before being placed on the finished conveyor.
Finished windings travel down the conveyor to the end of the system process where an LR Mate picks finished windings and places them on a conveyor out of the system. Rejected windings are place on a separate reject chute; Coils could be rejected if they lack continuity.
