Case Study: Drilling Systems (2)

A shower door Customer approached GLASSLINE with a need to automatically drill shower doors. The doors had many holes and there were many different styles. Therefore a flexible, productive line was needed. GLASSLINE designed a complete line that included a shuttle to pick parts from the edging line and place the part into a reference station. Once the part was located, it was servo shuttled to the first drill station, which included a vacuum table and two drilling heads. One drilling head was placed atop an XY location system, while on the opposite side the drill only required it to travel in one axis.  The part would then be shuttled to another drilling system with two more drills, also on a single axis moving perpendicular to glass flow.  In conjunction with the drill axes, the shuttle axes could also adjust the setdown position in order to drill holes in the required location. Holes could be drilled along the top edge, the central area, and the bottom edge of the shower doors, while a range of door sizes could be handled.  Parts were then conveyed in a U configuration and shuttled back into the main production line.