Delta Screw Sorting and Packaging Solution for One Production Line with SCARA Robot and Machine Vision System Integration

With changing customer habits, the market demand for personalized furniture has gradually increased. Many furniture manufacturers start off making modular system furniture to customize furniture production and services to fulfill customers' diverse and personalized demands. Manufacturers disassemble a furniture product into components, and customers or designers can complete assembly by simply following an instruction sheet. A furniture product must contain a correct and sufficient screw set for installation. Delta offers furniture manufacturers an integrated screw sorting and packaging solution for machine automation. The solution helps reduce a great amount of time and labor, and also refines the overall screw packaging processes to offer a technology upgrade for the enterprise.

The mechanism of the screw sorting and packaging includes the following processes: hot-pressed packaging, material placement, feeding, and sealing. Conventional screw feeding and packaging requires assembly workers who can easily misplace a screw or provide an insufficient quantity of screws per pack. This may generate shortcomings that cause customers to fail in assembling products, and reduce the customers' desire to purchase modular furniture in the future.

To meet customer demands for screw inspection and packaging, Delta adopts four sets of the SCARA Robot DRS60L Series and its control system, along with four sets of the Machine Vision System DMV Series and its cameras, to construct an “automated pick and place workstation” for screw feeding and packaging. The solution achieves quick material switching and expands material types to achieve flexible and diverse production line sorting and packaging automation.

In the operating process, an assembly line delivers empty material boxes to each robot workstation, where the DMV Series visually inspects images of the materials taken by cameras. The inspection signal is transmitted to the Robot Controller with Servo Drive Integrated ASDA-MS Series via RS-232 protocols to command the SCARA Robots to pick up screws from the corresponding section, and place the material box to complete the sorting process. After sorting, material boxes are hot-press sealed to finish the entire process of sorting and packaging.

Delta also adopts the High Performance PLC DVP-EH3 Series as the main controller to command control feeding, assembly operation and finishing. The master controller enacts real-time data exchange with the DVP-EH3 Series for the production line and the ASDA-MS Series at the robot stations via high-speed Ethernet transmission. For adjusting motion axes of the production line and the SCARA Robot, users can correct the command program to the main controller based on their demands, achieving high-speed and flexible control performance.

In actual application, Delta's screw sorting and packaging solution brings about the following benefits to customers:

．The ”sorting and packaging” integrated solution: Integrating the SCARA Robots and the Machine Vision Systems, this solution successfully demonstrates multiple screw sorting and packaging processes in one production line, saving factory space and enhancing production efficiency

．High-compatibility communication interface for easy hardware upgrade: The High Performance PLC DVP-EH3 Series controls the motion axes in the production line via pulse-train, which maintains the same communication interface as the clients' existing equipment adopts. With Delta's integrated solution, clients do not need to replace existing equipment to exchange data and execute commands with controllers to easily achieve equipment upgrade

．Replace human labor, reduce defect rate and cost: The SCARA Robot and the Machine Vision System replace human labor for feeding and screw inspection, increasing the yield rate of screw packaging and overall production efficiency, and saving human labor and after-sales service cost

Delta provides a screw sorting and packaging solution that adopts high-efficiency screw feeding production lines for customers. By enhancing productivity and precision for screw packaging, we successfully reduce time and material waste for more outstanding industry competitiveness.