Printing on plastic connectors for a French company

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For this project, a French company turned to Alpilles Automation to print symbols on both sides of a connector.

The project

A company based in France turned to Alpilles Automation to automate their printing and thereby reduce the number of staff needed to look after machines. The company used to have ten pad printing machines that were overseen by several people. The speed of the machines was much lower than the speed optimised by Alpilles Automation by the end of the project (24,000 connectors per hour).

The purpose of our involvement was to concentrate and optimise production into a single machine, i.e. one marking line. The goal was to produce a printed connector that was 100% controlled and packaged by the end of the   line.

We introduced a system for unpicking non-printed connectors and an automated loading system. In total, two robots and two Iris III machines were installed. We wre able to set up reverse side printing thanks to a robot and Iris III machine. Then a second Iris III machine and a second a robot were used to recover products printed on one side and turn them over to position them on the other side of the product.

We then installed a two-sided camera control system, and an automated product packaging system. Those made it possible to do quality control on final products and check their conformity before packing compliant printed parts into boxes.

Our work enable the customer to increase production capacity, save time and, above all, to make savings on labour. Now only one person is required to check the installed machine, which operates independently for an hour.

This project demonstrated perfectly the skill of Alpilles Automation, as we used our long-established know-how, robotics and our new Iris printing machines. Our customers’ requirements were such that we installed our two flagship products alongside each other.

Through this project, which we ran from A to Z, we proved that were are able to print on all kinds of products on request and to set up whole printing lines, including packaging, printing and checking of the printed products. We gave the customer a made-to-measure, fully personalised solution. A real challenge that our teams passed with flying colours!