Aspects of automation in the shoe industry

The shoe manufacturing industry has undergone a revolution during the last 50 years, due to the introduction of task specific machinery. Great technological strides have been made in the areas of shoe manufacture prior to actual component assembly. Computer systems are now becoming the norm for the design of shoes for today's market place. Technological innovations have also started to be applied in the assembly and construction processes of modern shoes. Computer controlled cutting machines calculate the optimum usage of leather from any given hide, new machines allow decorative stitch patterns to be associated with a given shape and size of component and automatically stitched on to the presented workpiece. However the majority of assembly operations have remained predominantly manual with technology playing a secondary role to the human operator due to complexities either in manipulation, control or sensing. In these machines electronic and mechanical innovations have been used to add new features to often simple machines and in some cases to simplify some of the more complex operations, thus increasing productivity but reducing the required dexterity and knowledge of an operator. Modern preferences in industry are to utilise fully automated machines, that are as operator independent as possible, thus improving quality, consistency and production speed whilst at the same time reducing production costs.Due to the nature of the shoe manufacturing industry and the complex operations that have to be performed in order to construct a shoe, machinery manufacturers who have ventured into this field of automation have generally struggled to gain acceptance from the shoe makers as the machinery is generally complex and slow in operation. This together with the fact that a large proportion of the world's main footwear production is centred in the far east, with their correspondingly low labour costs, has held back the automation of the shoe  manufacturing industry.This thesis examines a selection of operations encountered in the construction of a typical shoe. These include operations for processing single flat component parts as well as more complex three-dimensional operations encountered when lasting and soling a shoe. The aim of the research was to develop an understanding of processes encountered in specific areas within the shoe manufacturing industry in order to identify areas where further advances in automation could be achieved. This understanding has been applied to produce proposals and in some cases hardware, to allow for the development of working systems

Conformal Robotic Stereolithography

Additive manufacturing by layerwise photopolymerization, commonly called stereolithography (SLA), is attractive due to its high resolution and diversity of materials chemistry. However, traditional SLA methods are restricted to planar substrates and planar layers that are perpendicular to a single-axis build direction. Here, we present a robotic system that is capable of maskless layerwise photopolymerization on curved surfaces, enabling production of large-area conformal patterns and the construction of conformal freeform objects. The system comprises an industrial six-axis robot and a custom-built maskless projector end effector. Use of the system involves creating a mesh representation of the freeform substrate, generation of a triangulated toolpath with curved layers that represents the target object to be printed, precision mounting of the substrate in the robot workspace, and robotic photopatterning of the target object by coordinated motion of the robot and substrate. We demonstrate printing of conformal photopatterns on spheres of various sizes, and construction of miniature three-dimensional objects on spheres without requiring support features. Improvement of the motion accuracy and development of freeform toolpaths would enable construction of polymer objects that surpass the size and support structure constraints imparted by traditional SLA systems.American Society for Engineering Education. National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate FellowshipNational Institute of Mental Health (U.S.) (University of Michigan Microfluidics in Biomedical Sciences Training Program. 5T32-EB005582)Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART

Intelligent control of an automated adhesive dispensing cell.

Imperial Users onl

Mechatronics applied to scale model decoration

The European toy industry is very heavily dependent on manual labour and therefore vulnerable to Far Eastern competitors, who have the advantage of lower labour costs. Automation is Europe's best hope of beating off this oriental challenge. The aim of the project described within this thesis is to investigate the replacement of a traditionally manual series of operations by flexible automation to provide the basis for higher productivity and a greater degree of responsiveness to product change, leading to Just In Time Manufacture with reduced Work In Progress, while still retaining the high quality traditionally associated with the product. This thesis presents one of the first working attempts to this end, represented by a proof-of­concept cell designed and commissioned for investigating the many problems and possibilities associated with the decoration of scale models of cars and trains. The cell was designed using the Mechatronics approach which means that the various mechanical, electrical and electronic and computing possibilities have been taken into account from the start of the design stage. The proof-of-concept cell consists of five stations which provide the necessary means of loading the models in the cell, identifying the models and their orientation, decorating the models, inspecting the decorated models and finally palletising them for assembly. The industrial partners for the project were Hornby Hobbies Limited, J-L Automation and Staubli Unimation. Because this project centres around the present decoration operations at Hornby Hobbies Limited, which is heavily dependant on pad printing, an overview of pad printing is included. This will give the reader a background to the problems faced during the project. Before describing the proof-of-concept cell and its hardware and software components, the present factory based method and the constraints put on the project by Hornby Hobbies Limited are explained so that the reasons for choices within the cell will be more readily understood. A brief history of Scalextric is also included so that the reader may also understand some of the historical problems associated with the product. The result of this mechatronic approach are two fold: a) the efficiency of the cell is improved because the individual parts are working at optimal efficiency b) the cell has a greater degree of flexibility because of the re-programming facilities embedded in each of its component parts. This Mechatronic investigation has led to new concepts for pad printing and assembly operations and these are described in detail in the conclusions

Development towards a focus variation based micro-co-ordinate measuring machine

The increasing number of small and fragile parts that are being manufactured using micromachining technology has raised the demand for co-ordinate measurement machines (CMM) that can measure on a micro- and millimetric scale without contacting the part, thus avoiding damage to the surface of the part. These instruments are expected to measure on a micro- and millimetric scale with a measuring uncertainty in the nanometre range. A number of techniques used for contactless surface measurements exist, such as the focus variation (FV) technique, which have the ability to perform measurements on the micro- and millimetric scale in a short amount of time. These instruments may have the potential to be implemented in a non-contact micro-CMM platform. [Continues.

Micro-manufacturing : research, technology outcomes and development issues

Besides continuing effort in developing MEMS-based manufacturing techniques, latest effort in Micro-manufacturing is also in Non-MEMS-based manufacturing. Research and technological development (RTD) in this field is encouraged by the increased demand on micro-components as well as promised development in the scaling down of the traditional macro-manufacturing processes for micro-length-scale manufacturing. This paper highlights some EU funded research activities in micro/nano-manufacturing, and gives examples of the latest development in micro-manufacturing methods/techniques, process chains, hybrid-processes, manufacturing equipment and supporting technologies/device, etc., which is followed by a summary of the achievements of the EU MASMICRO project. Finally, concluding remarks are given, which raise several issues concerning further development in micro-manufacturing

Automation of garment assembly processes

Robotic automation in apparel manufacturing is reviewed and investigated. Gripper design for separation and de-stacking of batch cut fabric components is identified as an important factor in implementing such automation and a study of existing gripper mechanisms is presented. New de-stacking gripper designs and processes are described together with experimental results. Single fabric component handling, alignment and registration techniques are investigated. Some of these techniques are integrated within a demonstrator robotic garment assembly cell automating the common edge binding process. Performance results are reported