SECOND GENERATION ELECTRONIC POWER ASSISTED STEERING

Contax Ltd - UK

19 July 2004

Contax Ltd, has been selected by a world leader in the manufacture and supply of automotive assemblies to develop and install automated assembly lines for its next generation electronic power assisted steering systems.

The solution purchased has involved the development and commissioning of three bespoke MTA systems for soldering and assembly, dispensing conformal coatings and testing. The new line will also offer full traceability and ensure quality control, so helping the manufacturer maintain its target of zero ppm (parts per million) failure.

The manufacturer first started working with Contax 3 years' ago, when it purchased a tabletop soldering robot for prototyping followed by its first MTA automated assembly line. When they wanted to develop a new production line the technical production manager included Contax in his review to select the best solution.

Explained Jan O'Connor, Managing Director at Contax Ltd, "We had worked with manufacturer before and they trusted our judgement. Using our broad knowledge of automation processes and products and detailed understanding of MTA, we worked with our customer to develop three bespoke systems. Combined, these provided a fully integrated, high-quality production capability that ensures high capacity and zero ppm failures. The lines comprised: assembly and soldering, dispensing and testing."

Quality control and traceability are key features of the new line. The MTA system ensures that each pallet is data tagged, so that the location of each part can be tracked and identified at any given time. Each MTA system checks that the previous machine has passed the parts, and if one part fails then it is immediately identified by the system and rejected automatically.

Contax and MTA have designed the dispenser so that the conformal coating is positioned with high accuracy, so protecting the unit whilst avoiding the sensor. As this process is one of the last stages of production, any errors would result in the destruction of virtually completed units, which would prove very costly.

The customer had identified a number of improvements over the first MTA production line - such as vision inspection and product traceability. Together, Contax and MTA developed the new systems to exploit all the latest technologies to good effect.