Energy case study
Challenge:
Landis+Gyr is the global industry leader in energy management, with solutions for electricity, gas, heat/cold and water measurement for utilities. With the current push by the UK government to install “smart meters” in every home in England, Wales, and Scotland by 2020. Landis+Gyr have had to significantly ramp up production to keep up with their new supply demands. Therefore Landis+Gyr opted to incorporate automated assembly lines to their existing manufacturing facilities.
Solution:
One of the projects we were asked to look at the marry up between the top and bottom gas meter housing sub-assemblies, to create the complete gas meter body. The cell consists of 6 work stations, which are fed by a recirculating conveyor system which indexes the tooling pallets between the stations. An operator will load the bottom and top gas meter housing sub-assemblies on to the tooling pallet. The pallet is then indexed through the cell. The first robot applies resin around a 6-pin electrical connector, and cures via a UV light. The second robot then plasma cleans, to remove impurities and contaminants from all the surfaces that will have adhesive applied. The third and final robot then applies adhesive to the cleaned surfaces. The final station is a manual unload, where the operator picks up the two sub-assemblies and marries them up, and places them within a bander which forms the lip of the gas meter which permanently bonds them together.
Results:
After the introduction of the cell into Landis+Gyr manufacturing line. There has been a significant reduction in the amount of gas meter bodies that have had to be scrapped due to leak test failures. Due to:
• Plasma cleaning surface preparation improving the adhesive bond
• Positional accurate and measured adhesive application process
• Repeatable process which provides the quality required to ensure a suitable seal between the two sub-assemblies.