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Advanced design helps reduce RSI injury risks |
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| Electro-pneumatic system saves workers from injury while handling automotive steel blanks |
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Written by Mike Edwards
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Repetitive strain injuries (RSIs) are a common problem at high-volume
parts handling companies, and automotive tailored blank part supplier
Noble Metal Processing Canada, Inc. is no exception.
Brantford, Ont-based Noble Metal wanted a system for its operators who
handle hundreds of 30-50 lb laser-welded steel blanks each day which
emerge from inspection laser welding stations at various locations
around its plant.
Noble Metal’s customers include General Motors, with tailored blanks for the Equinox and Impala models, and Chrysler, with tailored blanks for the 300, Charger and Magnum models. Linear and non-linear laser-welded blanks created at Noble are produced for inner door panels, window frames, whole body sides and floor pans.
 The Festo electro-pneumatic controls permit operators to flip blanks into a vertical orientation for detailed inspection of weld seams without incurring repetitive strain injuries (RSIs).
After blanking, the component blanks are carefully prepared for welding and clamped together. A focused beam of energy, the laser, then welds the components together to create a laser-welded blank.
“Our product has to be 100 per cent defect free for our customers. Each laser-welded blank has to be inspected,” says Ralph La Stella, maintenance technician and 10-year veteran of Noble Canada.
La Stella took on the personal challenge of creating a table that would eliminate the RSIs that operators were suffering as result of turning and shifting the blanks to view them properly. So with the help of La Stella, local automation systems integrator Edwards Pro-Tech Ltd. (www.edwardsprotech.com) and Festo Inc. (www.festo.com), Noble came up with an innovative vertically-oriented electro-pneumatic inspection turntable platform that has reduced lost man-hours considerably within the plant. “Now operators can stop the turntable in mid-rotation to inspect welds without health and safety concerns,” he says.
The system provides significant improvements over the labour-intensive methods of the past where staff had to use their hands to pinch-grip the blanks to move them along, explains La Stella. “There’s less fatigue at the end of the day for operators, less strain on the shoulders, elbows and wrists.”
 Ralph La Stella of Noble demonstrates laser-welded tailored blank inspection station turntable.
The turntable itself rotates on a Festo DRQ-100 rack and pinion rotary actuator. System control comes from a system that includes an FEC PLC with two eight-point input modules and a four-point output module, and a VTSA ISO valve terminal with six valves that mounts directly to the turntable.
Mike Edwards is the editor of Design Product News (www.dpncanada.com) This article was first published in Design Product News, and is reprinted here with permission.
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