Seat Belt Assembly Jig with
Automatic Product Recognition.
During the manufacture of a seat belt various items of furniture ( buckle, clips
etc.) have to be threaded on to the belt in the correct order, then a retaining
button has to be fitted at the correct distance from the end of the belt. The other
end of the belt is already wound onto the tension reel.
Apart from there being different items of furniture for each make of car, there are
often four different versions of a belt for an individual car model (front L/R, rear
L/R), each with a different distance for the button. Also seat belt manufacture is
on a just-in-time basis. Together these dictate short production runs with many
product changes during a shift.
Therefore a key requirement of this system was flexibility and rapid set-up.
Close co-operation between Quercus, the engineering company making the
machine, and the customer, resulted in a design which provided instantaneous
product changeover.
A PLC was used for this system, which was installed in 1996.
