Concept for Robot-Based Cable Assembly Regarding Industrial Production

The assembly of cables in industrial production is still a largely manually performed task. Therefore, automatic cable assembly offers much potential in terms of efficiency. The major challenge of automating this task lies in the formlessness of the cables, which entails unknown and inconstant states of the assembly objects. In this paper, a process chain and a concept are presented for the automated cable assembly in an industrial context. The process chain consists of five process steps, which are used to structure existing approaches and system configurations for automated cable assembly from a production technology perspective. The emphasis is on the coverage of the process steps and the system technology. The presented concept represents an approach for robotic cable assembly focusing on the flexibility to process multiple product variants. Basis for the ability to handle a variety of variants is the avoidance of a forced shape on the cables. For this approach, system technology as well as challenges and possible solutions are presented.

Proposals to improve the coaxial cable assembly process in an aerospace company

For any company it is of utmost importance to have quality processes and products to deliver to its customers and that they are satisfied with them. In the same way, take care of your economy and the expenses that you have for this. This project revolves around the quality that is presented in the products. In the company under study there was a problem specifically in the area of coaxial cable assembly, in which a considerable number of defects were identified from the electrical and continuity test. To solve the problem, the objective is to develop an improvement proposal that helps to minimize the defects found in the aforementioned area. Regarding the applied method, the modified Six Sigma DMAIC procedure was followed. Statistical tools were used to analyze the results obtained, to have evidence of their behavior for the problem posed and that the best decision could be made to improve the coaxial cable assembly process. Having as a main result a proposal to improve the coaxial cable assembly process which will significantly reduce the defects generated in the electrical and conductivity test.

Performance Study of Split Ferrite Cores Designed for EMI Suppression on Cables

The ideal procedure to start designing an electronic device is to consider the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) from the beginning. Even so, EMC problems can appear afterward, especially when the designed system is interconnected with external devices. Thereby, electromagnetic interferences (EMIs) could be transmitted to our device from power cables that interconnect it with an external power source or are connected to another system to establish wired communication. The application of an EMI suppressor such as a sleeve core that encircles the cables is a widely used technique to attenuate EM disturbances. This contribution is focused on the characterization of a variation of this cable filtering solution based on openable core clamp or snap ferrites. This component is manufactured by two split parts pressed together by a snap-on mechanism which turns this into a quick, easy to install solution for reducing post-cable assembly EMI problems. The performance of three different materials, including two polycrystalline (MnZn and NiZn) materials and nanocrystalline (NC) solution, are analyzed in terms of effectiveness when the solid sleeve cores are split. The possibility of splitting an NC core implies an innovative technique due to the brittleness of this material. Thus, the results obtained from this research make it possible to evaluate this sample’s effectiveness compared to the polycrystalline ones. This characterization is carried out by the introduction of different gaps between the different split-cores and analyzing their behavior in terms of relative permeability and impedance. The results obtained experimentally are corroborated with the results obtained by a finite element method (FEM) simulation model with the aim of determining the performance of each material when it is used as an openable core clamp.