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We help develop system requirements to meet clients' specific needs and then design and integrate equipment to meet the developed requirements. System integration can include new components or off-the-shelf equipment in new configurations for specific requirements.

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) integrated a variety of equipment to make automotive wire harnesses that required strict quality control. Two robots were required to handle multiple wires at either end of the harness, and a special machine was bought to manufacture the wire circuits to quality standards. SwRI developed a transfer device and carousels to handle the manufactured circuits from the wire circuit machine to the robots for harness manufacture. SwRI had to develop a special real-time crimp monitor to ensure the terminals were properly crimped as the circuits were manufactured, and this was integrated into the wire circuit machine. SwRI had to design and build special end effectors that could handle multiple wires at the same time and insert them into terminal blocks with accuracy of a few thousandths of an inch.

SwRI combined equipment from three different manufacturers with SwRI equipment to produce a single automated eyeform line for stabilizer bars. The Institute integrated material handling equipment, rapid gas furnaces, and press hardware into a single line and wrote the top level PLC code to control and interface with the operators. This reduced operating staff from three to two people and increased productivity of the eyeform line.

SwRI integrated a robot and a linear table with a vision system for precision chip assembly. The robot would retrieve chip stock and move over a vision system camera inline with a precision linear table. The vision system would look at all the pins (more than 100) and optimize chip rotation and determine the best linear location for insertion. Once this was done, the linear table would move to the correct location, and the robot would insert the chip. Accuracy was to be within 0.0002–0.0003 inch.
 
 

SwRI integrated a robot, two cameras, vision system, and 6-degrees-of-freedom mouse to do real-time control of a robot through three-dimensional space. Robot motion was controlled by the mouse while the operator was using a 3-D monitor display and dual cameras on the robot to visualize the area around the robot work envelope. This was to improve the operator's ability to work in a teleoperation mode when the operator cannot be at the work site.
 

For more information about system integration services capabilities at SwRI or how you can contract with SwRI, please contact Paul T. Evans at pevans@swri.org or (210) 522-2994.
 

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Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®), headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, is a multidisciplinary, independent, nonprofit, applied engineering and physical sciences research and development organization with 11 technical divisions.

June 18, 2008