Benefits
Productivity
A lightweight robust manual fixture or a robot-manoeuvred fixture can have tremendous impact on productivity. In some cases, every ounce of weight savings improves performance of the production cell. There are examples where the moment of inertia is reduced by more than 90%. This has fundamentally changed the way production is planned and will, in most cases, give considerable increase of productivity.
Tolerance
Carbon composite materials have little, if any, thermal expansion. This has a large impact on how especially large machines and fixtures can be designed. A tool from FlexProp is lightweight due to the manufacturing process and choice of materials which are virtually free from internal stresses thus providing high precision and dimensional stability throughout its lifetime. It is also well documented that the tolerance of lightweight tooling from FlexProp is very sharp and remains so.
Flexibility
Some production lines are limited to being redirected to where the fixtures are permanently attached to the floor. If a fixture is instead handled by a movable robot, the production flow can then be planned in a straight line. When a different model is being produced, it’s as simple as changing the robots’ fixtures. This has a major impact particularly on how truck cabs can be produced.
Investment Cost
By introducing lightweight tooling, the system as such can be downsized. In many cases, this has a large impact on the system cost. The price difference between conventional steel fixtures and a lightweight tool from FlexProp is significantly less than the additional cost for a larger robot. When the steel alternative requires specially-designed machines, there is a significant potential for cost reduction.
Where lightweight manual equipment is used, the maintenance costs have been significantly reduced due to excellent robustness and decreased wear, well motivating the extra cost for a lightweight tool.
Ergonomics
It is quite obvious that when the weight of a manual tool has been reduced from 36 to 8 kg, the operators are most thankful. In addition, productivity and quality improve. This is always combined with unchallenged robustness. A manual composite tool from FlexProp is insensitive to almost any mishandling.
Problem solving
There are examples of applications where the system is running with to much load or very close to maximum and suffering from wear, causing high maintenance costs and production stops. As FlexProp’s technology is interchangeable, a number of clients have experienced significantly reduced maintenance costs, reason alone to invest in a new fixture/gripper.
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