Automate to innovate

3424grg
3424grg

Automation can revolutionise the way today’s manufacturers operate by enabling them to reallocate labour and increase production. According to Cygnet Texkimp’s director of technology, Lee Simcock it’s precisely why automation is so hugely significant in today’s world.

Cygnet Texkimp manufactures custom machinery for the fibre handling and converting industry. Its business is focused in the technical materials market, but its roots go back to the traditional textile market of the 1970s.

In the last four decades, the company, which created some of the first ever carbon fibre creels for the military aerospace sector, has evolved with a portfolio that includes advanced creels, prepreg, coating, tape-slitting and filament-winding equipment for the international aerospace, automotive, wind energy and sporting good sectors. But the knowledge gained from those early years in traditional fibre handling runs deeply through everything the company does, not least its automation business.

“We know fibre and we know how it should be handled,” says Cygnet Texkimp’s director of technology, Lee Simcock. “So, when we moved into the automation arena ten years ago, it was a logical step for us.”

A decade ago, Cygnet Texkimp was outsourcing its automation and handling needs, but the size of the fibre bobbins or packages it was being asked to design machinery for had begun to grow significantly. With heavier packages to manipulate on and off larger creels – the largest now span an entire football pitch – the company realised the benefits of establishing its own specialist automation division.

Handling and automation expert, Simcock was appointed to head up the division, which now accounts for 30% of the firm’s total business and serves customers in the high-end aerospace and automotive industries as well as the traditional and household textile markets.

“In pursuit of greater production capacity and speeds, our customers were looking for ways to reduce downtime and effectively run their creels for longer before change-overs,” explains Simcock.

“They wanted to accommodate bobbins weighing up to 350kg into their manufacturing processes, and that made the need for automated handling greater than ever before.”

Cygnet Texkimp now offers a portfolio of automated systems alongside its fibre processing and converting technologies. As well as automatic creel loading and unloading solutions, the company supplies systems to wrap, pack and palletise bobbins of fibre which are specifically designed to eliminate contact with the fibre. With this technology, the company has responded to one of the biggest concerns of this market – how to remove opportunities for damage, or filamentation, which undermine the quality and consistency of the finished product. In this case, a bellows-type gripper inserted by a robot into the inner core of each bobbin enables them to be manipulated safely between processes.

Other automation technologies offered by the company include fibre-twisting machines, RFID, barcoding, vision, and auto guided vehicle (AGV) systems.

The rise of the robots

In the aerospace market, where many of Cygnet Group’s automation technologies are destined, Simcock and his team are so far, unaware of any manufacturers implementing Industry 4.0. He puts this down to the fact that the market is not yet producing the volume of composite parts or components to warrant calls for this capability.

“In the aerospace industry, materials and processes are constantly changing and, as Industry 4.0 is fundamentally about optimising processes, this has so far prevented its adoption on a notable scale.

“As and when the big automotive manufacturers start mass producing composite components, we expect the movement to take on greater relevance, but it will require hundreds of thousands of components to be manufactured using the same process, at the same workstations, to fuel its adoption.

“An Industry 4.0 manufacturing facility would involve robots and PLCs communicating via the web to enable a host of benefits, such as automatically scheduling maintenance in anticipation of a period of downtime and highlighting this with machinery and operators anywhere in the world.”

Another field in which Simcock is seeing greater interest is collaborative robotics (co-bots): “We’re working with several existing customers to explore how collaborative robots would work for their businesses as part of an automation system, particularly for lifting and loading tasks.

“Collaborative robots work with operators to make the manufacturing process safer, faster, and more productive. Whereas conventional robots have to be boxed in for safety because they can’t sense or respond to the presence of a human, collaborative robots can sense pressure and stop if a person or object is detected, making it possible for the two to work alongside each other.

“Collaborative robots are not only strong but also adaptive and easy to programme. They can follow a taught path dictated by the operator rather than requiring software reprogramming, and this allows for rapid and convenient process changes.”

A human and machine alliance

Simcock explains how changing attitudes to work across the world are fuelling rising demand for automation: “We’re seeing increasing take-up of our systems in countries where shifting working practices combined with socio-economic factors mean fewer people are prepared to do jobs that involve heavy and repetitive tasks such as lifting and loading.

“This isn’t only happening in the EU and US, but also in Asia. Societies are evolving all over the world as people’s aspirations change and grow. In the last five years we’ve seen it become more difficult for manufacturers in Eastern China to retain a workforce of manual labourers, for example. As salaries have increased, so workers in the region have been able to afford good quality education for their children. As a result, we’re now seeing a new generation of workers who don’t want to do the same jobs their parents did.

“This is precisely why automation is so hugely significant in today’s world. Manufacturers realise they will lose out if they don’t invest and recognise that automation can revolutionise the way they operate by enabling them to reallocate labour and increase production.

But Simcock argues that automation isn’t a replacement for humans: “Manufacturers still need skilled technical people to service, maintain and develop these technologies,” he concludes. “It’s crucial for manufacturers to take ownership of their automation for it to have the greatest long-term impact on their business. A bespoke automation solution is only truly effective for the lifecycle of that product. In a mass production facility, there is still an ongoing need to modify, maintain and re-programme these technologies, and that makes human intervention essential.”

http://cygnet-texkimp.com

Company

Cygnet Texkimp

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