Challenge

• Develop and build an automated strip part chopper machine to cut small parts from a length of pre-machined strip. Approximately 75 parts to be punched from each strip.
• Operators visually inspect strips for bad piece parts in the strip and mark the bad pieces with a black marker. The machine needs to read the marked parts on the strip and have the machine skip the marked parts from being punched.
• Customer has many different part strip configurations that the machine will need to be able to process.
• Increase production for various high volume parts.

 Solution

• Develop an automated process that will feed many different variations of part strips for a variety of parts.
• Use a servo driven actuator with a series of pneumatic grippers that will feed the strips in various increments to be positioned within a tolerance of +/-.0005 inch.
• Provide a contrast sensor to read the black mark on the strip identifying a bad part in the strip that needs to be advanced so that it is not punched out. The contrast sensor will read the part at the punch location in the die.
• Provide fiber optic through beam sensors in pneumatic gripper fingers to signal the machine of the end of the pre-loaded strip.
• Design and build a c-frame style pneumatic press utilized for punching parts from supplied strips
• Design and build stamping die for each unique part strip configuration utilizing a quick die changeover concept to be able to change over each unique stamping die within 5 minutes.
• Automated strip chopper to cycle and punch a part every 2 seconds.

 Benefits

• Increase production on high volume parts by developing an automated punch process instead of an operator hand fed and punched process.
• Build multiple automated punch machines in a cell to allow one operator to be able to run three machines at one time.
• Reduce operator fatigue from having to hand feed and place parts in die and then having to manually cycle the punch press for each punch stroke.