Assembly line - ZEITLAUF antriebstechnik

More efficiency with the new EtaCrown^® hybrid assembly line

When many variants are assembled by a manual process, assembly time is mostly dictated by the people involved. Hybrid assembly systems, on the other hand, take over the parts of the assembly process that can be profitably automated. Hybrid systems are particularly useful to assembly processes that are not yet able to be fully automated. Depending on the degree of automation, assembly times can be reduced to 60% less than manual assembly times, whilst preparation time is still within bounds.

After three years of development, ZEITLAUF^® antriebstechnik has now successfully taken into service a hybrid assembly line for assembling EtaCrown^®gearmotors. The assembly line works according to the “one-piece-flow principle”. This is a continuous flow assembly process in which the employee accompanies the gearhead throughout the entire assembly process.

Intelligent assembly line
The new EtaCrown^® assembly line includes state-of-the-art measuring and pressing technology developed as part of a research project conducted jointly with the Department of Manufacturing Automation and Production Systems (FAPS) at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and the LP Montagetechnik company. This particularly includes the development of measuring and analysis technology as well as the development of the “press process”.The ability to cope with a wide variety of variants is a further special feature: two special gearheads and two standard ranges each in two sizes (EtaCrown^® and EtaCrown^® Plus) make possible a total of 16 different gearhead versions able to be assembled using a flexible workpiece carrier system. All drives in the system’s measuring units and in its conveyor belts are products made by ZEITLAUF^®.

An intelligent preparation strategy means that the one-piece-flow assembly line can be converted in just 15 minutes. Thanks to the sophisticated planning of assembly procedure on the assembly line, the process of measuring and adjusting the gearheads now proceeds almost entirely under its own steam. With the assembly method used up to now, the manual measuring and adjustment process meant an order took twice as long to process. Now, thanks to parallel integrated measuring units, it is even possible to include prototype construction and a fast delivery service for items from the standard modular system to run parallel to series assembly, problem-free.

The technical particulars

Measuring-pressing technology: The gearhead structure is measured in entirety using a triangulation laser. Then comes a pressing process that precisely positions the gearwheel on the pinion. The press used is a servopress with a process precision of 0.01 mm.
Process data acquisition: All measurement and adjustment data for each and every gearmotor assembled is stored. This includes the measuring-pressing process data, the screwing device data, the force-distance data of the joining processes.
Unbroken chain of quality management

At ZEITLAUF^® antriebstechnik, every link in the process chain is accompanied by sophisticated quality management procedures. This approach has been pursued with the new hybrid EtaCrown^®production line so that these high standards of quality continue.