Stellantis Automates Small Parts Pick and Place
The Stellantis plant in Verrone, Italy has automated the pick & place of hydraulic clutch covers thanks to GuideNOW High-Precision.
Customer: Stellantis
Location: Verrone, Italy
Return on Investment: 10 months
Challenge
Stellantis sought to automate the process of picking hydraulic clutch covers that are delivered on cardboard trays and placing them on the pallets on the line. This process, however, posed several challenges:
- The manual delivery of cardboard layers to the station resulted in inconsistent positioning.
- The position of the covers on the cardboard layers were unpredictable due to the flexibility of cardboard boxes.
Solution
GuideNOW High-Precision was chosen for this application due to the requirement for extreme accuracy in locating and handling the very small and flats hydraulic clutch covers. A Zivid 2+ M60 camera was mounted directly on the End of Arm Tooling (EOAT) of a Universal Robots cobot. GuideNOW’s precise localization capabilities enabled the system to locate each cover individually, adjust the robot’s trajectory, and accurately place it for quality control and then on the pallet on the line. This solution avoided the need for a costly upgrade to the dunnage system, significantly reducing the overall automation cost for the station.
Benefits
- Cost-Efficient Automation: No modifications to the production environment, keeping automation costs low.
- Flexibility: Fully adaptable station with the ability to handle non-repeatable positions of the parts.