The US-based company, Laser Die & Engineering (LDE) builds custom
assembly tooling equipment for the automotive industry. One of its latest
projects involved the construction of a special rig for the assembly of
automotive interior headliners, and this required the installation of
sensors for a variety of assembly inspection tasks. One of these
inspection tasks requires 20 fibre optic sensors to verify the correct
location of mounting holes, while around 30 sensors are required to
confirm the presence of hardware to be attached to the headliner.
According to LDE's Harry Rissley, running power to each fibre optic
amplifier created a wiring mess , and the amplifiers they were using
were overly complicated and difficult to programme. However, a switch to
ifm electronic multi-channel fibre optic amplifiers proved beneficial.
These units accept up to eight fibre optic sensors and set-up is greatly
simplified thanks to a 'teach mode' feature.
A number of logic functions are available within the amplifiers, and LDE
took full advantage of these when setting up its inspection system. For
example, by programming an 'And' function for the hole verification task,
the company was able to reduce each group of eight outputs to just one,
greatly reducing the workstation's I/O requirement. Moreover, all power
and output wiring is contained within a single connector.
According to Mr Rissley, since switching to the ifm units, installation
time has decreased by 40%, while the material cost per fibre point has
dropped by more than 20%. Wiring is now greatly simplified and much
neater, and the intuitive menu structure makes for painless set-up.