Infra-red welding cell
January 1st 2006

A welding system that uses special-purpose infra-red emitters from Heraeus Noblelight has helped Hepworth drainage improve the quality of an inspection chamber assembly production process at its Lichfield plant.

It also eliminates the environmental problems associated with a hot melt adhesive technique that was previously used.

CPR Automation developed an automated process to join raising pieces to the base of the inspection chamber and then to each other. The solution is an enclosed infra-red welding cell, into which base units are fed by conveyor and raising pieces are transferred from an adjacent injection moulding machine by an ABB robot.

With cycle times of 22sec, the new process is faster than the former semiautomatic system and improvements in quality have been achieved. There have been gains in energy efficiency too, as the infrared emitters are switched on only when necessary.

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