Enhancing Injection Molding Machine Efficiency with Robots

Challenges and Goals

Our customer D'Emmould in southern Germany manufactures injection-molded components for the automotive industry. For a component that was previously manually inserted and removed from the injection molding machine, the customer was looking for a robot-assisted automation solution. An automatic optical quality inspection was also required. 

One challenge was the complex cycle: The raw parts – cylindrical metal parts – must be inserted into a 4-cavity injection mold and aligned in rotation. Subsequently, these raw parts are overmolded on one side. The short injection molding cycle required rapid removal, while the raw parts required very precise insertion into the mold. Subsequently, the quality of the overmolded shell and surface had to be inspected optically. 

The Solution

The customized solution from Robotec Solutions consists of two robots that handle the components. A camera with a vision system from Cognex inspects the overmolded section optically for quality.

A cycle starts by the first robot preparing four raw parts: It picks them up at the feed via a feeder bowl. These four parts are placed on precision mandrels and are then already correctly aligned. The second robot picks up the parts and moves in front of the mold. Once it is open, it retrieves the finished parts and the sprues, swivels the gripper, and inserts the raw parts.

The sprues are discarded into a box – the finished parts are handed over to a camera station. This now inspects the parts individually. Based on the camera evaluation, the first robot places the parts in boxes or discards them into the reject chute. Thanks to our self-developed vision system, only a single photo is required for optical quality inspection. The evaluation is carried out using AI software trained with good/bad samples.