AUTOMATION AND ROBOTICS | MACHINERY
tion of 600,000 units. For a long time, the plugs were made semi-automatically. “Between work steps, there was idle time for the
operating staff,” said Tobias Büchner, production manager at Rauschert. “It became clear that we needed more automation.” The injection moulding equipment at the facility consists of 28 machines – with the newest 14 all equipped with a standardised automation cell with a W828 at its core. The automation cells include the robot’s working area, an automation station for insertion, assembly and inspection tasks, feeder units and the outfeed conveyor belt, which is laid out to accommodate boxes of different shapes and sizes, including Euro pallets. The robots carry out everything from manual removal to complex insertion jobs. The manufacturing process starts with prepara-
tion of the pins and injection moulding of the plug housings. The robot then demoulds the housings and passes them on to fully automatic downstream processing. Here, the pins are fused with the housings and then presented to a camera for inspection. “The crucial point of our new standard is total
integration into the control system”, said Büchner. “In each case, the linear robot is the master of the downstream work steps.” With the automation cells, the team has created
a standardised automation system which covers many different requirements. This is needed, as it uses more than 300 moulds in active use, and their customer base is broad. “The numbers of units range from 500 up to 3
million,” said Büchner. “If one of our machines has an unplanned standstill, we can quickly transfer the mould and the automation system to another machine.” The standardisation project has increased both
flexibility and productivity of the injection mould- ing production and improved quality, says the company. “Through the optimisation of setup times, we are also able to use our production cells more effec- tively, which has a positive effect on our energy balance,” said Büchner.
Cost pressure Swoboda, a global producer of metal-plastic composite parts, has doubled capacity at its plant in Jihlava, Czech Republic thanks to increased automation from Wittmann. Here, the company makes millions of switchbox housing components every year – but the production process has changed entirely recently.
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“Cost pressure has risen enormously”, says
Václav Dostal, managing director of Swoboda CZ. “That is why we invested in a new, fully automatic production cell.” Two new production cells – which work semi-
automatically – are now up and running. “With the new process, we have doubled our
capacity”, said Dostal. A large Wittmann vertical injection moulding machine with 270t clamping force sits at the centre of each production cell. The machine offers “convenience” for production staff due partly to the intuitive user interface, which lets even inexperi- enced staff achieve consistent part quality and re-start the process efficiently after a standstill. Mould bottom halves are positioned on a
rotary table to produce the switchbox housing components. A large six-axis robot removes the finished parts from the cavities and simultaneously refills them with new inserts. “The challenge this part presents to us is the
large number and diversity of the insert parts, which the automation system must handle safely,” said Dostal. Another robot is responsible for pre-positioning
the insert parts in frames. The parts to be over-moulded include several signal pins, power pins and sockets. The injection- moulded components are then transported away from the clamping unit by the transfer system. They are passed to camera inspection and DMC marking and deposited in trays before leaving the production cell. All empty frames and transport carriages are returned to their starting points at the end of the cycle.
Primus launch At Chinaplas, Wittmann is planning to launch its new Primus 118 linear robots for injection mould- ing machines with clamping forces of up to 250t. While the maximum payload in this size range was previously 5kg, the new robot offers a maximum payload of up to 8kg. A new design with reinforced demoulding and vertical axes as well as reinforced drives underpin its high performance, says Witt- mann. The robot offers up to 10 valve slots and various combinations of gripper and vacuum circuits.
Since the drilling pattern in the robot’s main
beam has not changed compared to previous generations, the Primus 118 can be easily integrat- ed into existing systems. The Primus series is
March/April 2026 | INJECTION WORLD 25
Above: Rauschert makes these plugs in a production cell using Wittmann linear robots
IMAGE: WITTMANN
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