Case Study: Moving Gantry for Automotive Gluing and Forming Application

Background: 

Fortune 500 customer wanted to automate their production of formed carpet for the automotive market. Their existing production method was inefficient, too labor intensive, quality was not consistent and volume was inadequate.

See Specialty Design's solution below...

Solution: 

Specialty Design designed and built a gantry press that automatically glued, positioned, assembled, pressed, trimmed and formed carpet into a finished product. Payback was significant due to labor savings and increased volume, quality consistently met demanding automotive standards and all safety issues were addressed.  Here is how Specialty Design’s system worked:

1. Carpet is positioned behind the Gantry Press and underlayment is positioned in front of it.  
2. The Gantry Press picks up the carpet and moves toward the underlayment. 
3. While moving, each of the individually programmable glue heads precisely spray the contours of form holding the underlayment. 
4. Once precisely positioned over the underlayment, the Gantry Press applies a specified downward force for a prescribed period of time to form the finished carpet contour. At the same time, excess carpet is trimmed and vacuumed away. 
5. The Gantry Press returns to the home position and begins the next cycle.

Specialty Design’s system required 2 operators (versus the previous 10) and reduced the customer’s cycle time by 250%.