2D Barcode, Cover Place,
Laser Mark

Automatic Screwdriving

Advent designed, built and installed a system to automatically assemble and package the smoke detector sensor base. The system utilizes a synchronous pallet conveyor transport mechanism. The pallet conveyor system allows for the movement of product from station to station and provides holding clips for products containing wires. The system is designed to handle 5 different product styles.

The sensor base consists of a number of large components that are not economical to automatically load into the system. To further complicate matters some of the sensor base models include printed circuit boards containing wires. Advent designed the system to minimized component feeding costs and system complexity by utilizing operators to manually feed these components while automating operations which could not be performed manually or were very repetitive and offered a good return on investment.

Following is a brief description of the operations performed by the system:

1. Infeed – Operators manually load the sensor base housing, printed circuit board, and back cover onto a pallet. If the product contains wires the operator secures the end of the wires into a clip on the pallet.
2. Automatically feed and drive two sems screws.
3. Automatically feed and drive four torx screws.
4. Read 2D ID Matrix bar code on PCB. This information is used to setup the Teredyne circuit board tester.
5. Configure Teradyne test system, and test circuit board.
6. Flip back cover onto housing.
7. Laser print 2D ID Matrix bar code and product specifications on cover.
8. Ultrasonically weld cover to housing
9. Automatically feed mounting screws into a pre-formed bag
10. Feed finished sensor base into pre-formed bag
11. Feed instruction sheet into the sensor base bag.
12. Seal bag.
13. Eject finished product.
14. Reject product that failed during any of the automated assembly operations or test.