Norwalt Design offers various styles of assembly machines including automated assembly systems for consumer goods, medical device assembly systems, cap closing machines, lining machines, layer packers, puck loaders and depuckers, leak testing machinery, feed systems, and prefeeders. Norwalt is considered one of the top custom assembly machine providers by many of the Fortune 500 companies.
Norwalt manufactures high-speed assembly lines. In these lines the second part in an assembly needs to be held back if the initial part being assembled is deemed bad or not present. Currently this process had been successfully done in production at a rate of 720ppm. New requirements are now pushing us to build future machines at 1200ppm. The current air cylinder technology will not be fast or reliable enough to accomplish this task.
In order to test this project, a constant stream of caps will need to be provided. We will send down a circulating loop, a current starwheel design, a programmable servo motor to run the starwheel so timing signals can be sent to whatever inhibit system is used. The starwheel design may need to change to accommodate timing.
The goals of the project are as follows:
- Set up system as is and make any necessary changes to bring the cap infeed to the starwheel to work reliably at 1200ppm. The system should be able to run for 15 continuous minutes without a jam.
- Develop a cap inhibit system that can hold a cap for a particular pocket that is programmed. Ideally if the system can hold back every other cap with the starwheel running at 1200ppm
would give us the best test. We would likewise like to see this run for 15 minutes. - Life of the inhibit system should be at a minimum of 2 years running 24 hours a day 7 days a week, every day of the year with the assumption that it cycles once every 2 starwheel revolutions.
- Cost-We would like to keep the cost of the inhibit portion of the system to be under $5,000. Any fabrication work for starwheels or other items will be deemed separate from this.
Norwalt manufactures between 30-50 custom assembly machines per year with each having inhibit systems on them. Upon completion of a proven design that meets the above criteria, the design would be implemented in a typical speed machine (say 600-700ppm) for testing or if an order for a higher speed line comes sooner put immediately on that. Once this is proven it will allow Norwalt to further itself from competition by offering this solution.