PLC Controlled Assembly Automation for Spot Welding Work Station

Abstract

Automation has created an eminent need in the present trend of manufacturing industries to boost its throughput with reduced manual intervention and benefit in terms of good product quality, reduced scrape rate, and efficient usage of resources. Assembly process necessitates more perfection to achieve good quality products, which can only be possible by employing highly skilled and experienced operators which costs more and hence Automation is the best choice to mitigate this problem. The present work is an effort to upgrade the manual assembly station for spot welding process to assemble three sub-components called cup, fastener and mesh together through spot welding process with an automatic part handling mechanism, controlled by sensor-based Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). The automated assembly station resulted in flaw less welded components with reduced cycle time, which enhanced the assembly process productivity from 2 parts/min to 6 parts/min.