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America Quartz Expertise (AQT) specializes within the manufacturing and processing of shaped quartz merchandise for the electronics and semiconductor industries at its plant in Hue, Vietnam. The manufacturing of AQT’s merchandise calls for the very best stage of meticulousness and accuracy.

Challenges

Beforehand, elements have been processed manually, with staff performing excessive temperature heating processes. This harmful and repetitive work meant that workers turnover was excessive, with an elevated threat of accidents. There was additionally the danger of errors that might result in critical manufacturing losses.

To resolve these challenges, AQT determined it wanted robots that may keep away from labor shortages, scale back threat and enhance productiveness.

Resolution

Having used ABB robots at its crops within the U.S., AQT approached ABB for an answer for its Hue plant. The result’s a robotic manufacturing cell consisting of an ABB IRB4600 industrial robotic, an IRB2600 industrial robotic and a moulding machine.

The ABB IRB4600 picks up the quartz workpiece and locations it into place for the warmth therapy course of. Following this, the IRB2600 robotic heats the workpiece evenly. Then, the cylinder mechanism sucks the heated quartz plate into the mould and shapes it. After 30 seconds, the vacuum valve shuts off, and the IRB 4600 robotic removes the product and repeats the cycle.

Outcomes

For the reason that introduction of the robots, plant effectivity and efficiency has been considerably improved, with 5 instances fewer faulty merchandise as a consequence of manufacturing errors.

“Utilizing the answer offered by ABB, our merchandise are actually persistently accomplished to the very best high quality, with much less guide intervention required and a discount in errors. Situations have additionally improved for staff as all the harmful and repetitive work is now taken care of by the robots,” stated Tran Phuoc Thanh Vu, manufacturing facility supervisor, America Quartz Expertise.

One other enchancment has been a dramatic discount in manufacturing cycle instances. With the robotic course of, manufacturing time has been lowered from 25 to simply 5 minutes, with a present common output of 100 items a day, a four-fold improve on the earlier manually-based manufacturing course of.

“The answer brings monumental worth to the plant – it improves manufacturing capability, ensures on time supply of buyer orders and gives excessive stability throughout the manufacturing course of,“ stated Vu. “We at all times intention to have a contemporary {and professional} manufacturing facility, utilizing the newest methods and applied sciences to attain a lean manufacturing course of and enhance productiveness. Our good expertise with ABB robots signifies that we plan to spend money on a number of robotic stations for the plant within the coming 12 months.”