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You are here: Home / Industry News / Saw it at MD&M: Functional integration in ultrasonic welding

Saw it at MD&M: Functional integration in ultrasonic welding

February 18, 2015 By Lisa Eitel Leave a Comment

Hermann-Ultrasonics-elephant-welded-MDM-2015
Here, my colleague Meg Schneider (who has far nicer cuticles than me, so serves as a better hand model) displays the elephant I got welded at the Herrmann Ultrasonics booth. The point of the display was to show attendees how it’s easy to integrate plastic welding into other plant operations.

Lisa-Eitel-Design-World-2015Last week at MD&M WEST 2015, I got to visit the Herrmann Ultrasonics booth. (Thank you to my esteemed colleague Neel Gleason for the reminder.)

There at the booth, Christina Van De Walker and Udo Skarke, Plastics Division vice president, showed me an automated setup for welding toy elephants …

… and showcasing how their welders can network with other plant equipment.

In short, one of Herrmann Ultrasonics’ standard modular ultrasonic welders, a HiQ DIALOG, was networked to a small Universal Robots’ touch-sensitive robot. The robot takes three parts of a plastic elephant toy—tusks and two body halves—and puts them together on a sonotrode tray. Then a camera checks to see that all the parts are present and stacked properly. Next, the welder arm comes down to apply vibrations and ultrasonically weld the elephant halves together.  Finally, a marking station tags the toy with the date, time, and application number.

Here’s a video of the automated setup in action … turn up your speakers:

In the real world, semi-automated multi-head welding machines often integrate several processes to get high functional density in confined spaces. So, machine builders add parts assembly, component detection, sensing, and even test processes to the actual joining process.  The only catch is that the ultrasonic welding machine must connect the auxiliary functions and create interfaces.

The good news is that it’s easier than ever integrate extra processes and auxiliary functions to ultrasonic multi-head machines as well as manual work stations and ultrasonic welding systems. Functional integration simplifies production monitoring and quality assurance processes.

According to information Van De Walker sent to me, the concept of functional integration originates from design theory “pursuing the goal of covering as many technical functions as possible with as few components as possible. There is no need to interrupt the process chain; this contributes to reducing unit costs and increasing production safety.”

01A-Herrmann-Functional-integration-Ultrasonic-tool-change
Here’s functional integration put to work in a real-world system. It’s a multi-head welding machine used to weld an automobile engine cover. It lets the machine make use of a tool-change kit.
Shown here are the parts of the machine showcasing functional integration: 1 is the ultrasonic welder; 2 is scratch-embossing equipment; 3 is a mechanical press-in unit and sensors.
Here’s the Herrmann Ultrasonics setup we saw at MD&M, complete with their own standard modular ultrasonic welder HiQ DIALOG and a small Universal Robots arm. The work cell can handle, test, weld, and mark parts … including toy elephants.

02B-Herrmann-Ultrasonics-Functional-Integration

Filed Under: Industry News, Networking + IoT Tagged With: Herrmann Ultrasonics

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