At Magna Mirrors, the production of molded parts for the automotive industry runs faster and failure-free! The reason: a new quick change chuck from >SAS< Automation. All media connections now have a defined position and the number of connections has been increased from 12 to 18.

Changing the grippers on robot arms is now as easy as changing a lens on a camera! The benefits of this are saving time and having a less- complicated system to connect the cables. Increasing the connections to 18 instead of the usual 12 (for air and vacuum) is a tremendous benefit in the production set up process.

Mr. Bernd Jonas is responsible for process automation at Magna Mirrors Dorfprozelten, a global supplier to the automotive industry and producer of automotive mirror systems. Although workcells for molded parts are fully automated, the operator has to change grippers manually. This requires the operator to disconnect tubing, remove a dovetail plate, and reattach the tubing in the correct position. If only two vacuum circuits are involved, this process can be completed fairly easily with a single pair of pliers. However, for many applications there is a high risk of mistakes . A large number of circuits or other complex control systems require specialized technical knowledge, which is not available to all operators.

Expensive down-time and fault analysis may result when cylinders or sprue pliers fail. Additionally, EOAT may need additional couplings to control vacuum cups, gripper fingers, sprue locators, and special cylinders

Quick Change Chucks
A quick change chuck system offered the best solution to Mr. Jonas. However, most products on the market have only 12 connections and, therefore, were not an acceptable alternative. >SAS< Automation found a solution by developing an individual coupling with 18 built-in pneumatic interfaces. The new tool changer, the QSR/QST 160-18, is similar to current >SAS< quick change chucks, but with 6 additional connections and a 35 mm larger width compared with the standard quick changers. " By having these additional connections, we were able to set-up the tooling in seconds. This represents a major labor savings to our company," explains Jonas. " In addition to labor savings, we were also able to handle more complex work, such as for a BMW exterior mirror. In this application, foot caps for the mirror could be easily scratched and required a special production process requiring 16 connections on the chuck. The new product from >SAS< Automation allowed us to very effectively meet our objectives.

Quick and Sure
"This gripper solution has reduced our set-up time from minutes to seconds. The operator simply has to unlock the gripper, move it from the head of the robot, plug on the new one, and lock it in place. Not only are errors eliminated, but less qualified operators are able to complete the change-over easily," added Jonas.

Return on Investment
While Magna Mirrors personnel understood that this would be a good investment, they were completely pleased with the tremendous amount of savings actually realized with this product. Initially, the new system was installed on two robots and worked flawlessly. The company plans to retool 25 more tools. "Providing labor saving solutions that reduce operator error is something >SAS< prides itself on. This is the difference our customers receive by working with a true engineering company,” said Johannes Schweigler, commercial manager for SAS.

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