Modernisation of a robot system at SAF-HOLLAND

HAIGER/BESSENBACH – As a leading manufacturer of chassis-related systems and components for trailers and semi-trailers, trucks and buses, SAF-HOLLAND trusts in a modern production with reliable machines. Recently, the company successfully modernised an older CLOOS welding system at its Bessenbach premises. Since 1998, the robots reliably welded supports of brake linings for truck drum brakes. Due to the retrofit by CLOOS and the installation of two new QIROX welding robots, the availability of the system could be increased further.

The SAF-HOLLAND S.A. Group with its headquarters in Luxembourg currently is active on six continents and has locations in 28 countries. The product range comprises axle and suspension systems, fifth wheels, kingpins, and landing gear and is marketed under the brands SAF, HOLLAND, and Neway. At the Bessenbach site, the complete production of trailer axles is concentrated. In 2016, the 850 employees produced about 220,000 axles.

CLOOS system in continuous operation since 1998
In the component production area, a CLOOS robot system welds the supports of brake lines for truck drum brakes. An operator manually inserts the parts and checks the quality after automated welding by the robots. If the parts meet the quality criteria, they are led to the lacquering system via a conveyor belt. Per shift the two robots weld around 450 parts, there are 7 variants. "The system has been running in 4-shift operation since 1998 and is thus continuously working without interruptions", explains Marco Krebs, department manager component production at SAF-HOLLAND GmbH in Bessenbach. "The only production pause is from Saturday at 10 o'clock p.m. to Sunday at 10 o'clock p.m."

Smooth system retrofit
In spring 2017 the system has been updated to further increase the availability. Now two new QIROX QRC-350 robots weld the components instead of the old robots. The new robots have enormous dynamics, shortest acceleration and highest offset speeds.

The system retrofit was smoothly done during Eastern 2017. "With eight days, CLOOS exactly met the defined period", explains Krebs. The system did not produce for a total of two weeks because there were also other changes beside the CLOOS technology. To build up a safety stock before the retrofit start, the inventory production took place on several Sundays in advance.