German plastics manufacturer Paul Rauschert Steinbach has modernized its injection molding production at its Steinbach am Wald site by deploying a standardized automation concept built around Wittmann linear robots. According to company production manager Tobias Büchner, the upgrade allows the 125-year-old family-run firm to handle production lots ranging from 500 to 3 million parts within a single cell architecture while sharply reducing setup times.
Standardizing Production Cells for High-Mix Manufacturing
The facility in Steinbach am Wald operates 28 injection molding machines, with the 14 newest units equipped with identical automation cells centered on Wittmann W828 linear robots. Udo Jakob, purchasing manager at Rauschert, stated that the company designed and built the automation cells internally to achieve rapid deployment across its diverse product lines. Each cell encloses the robot’s working area, an automation station for insertion, assembly, and testing tasks, feeding units, and a discharge conveyor belt capable of handling various box sizes and Europalets, according to maintenance manager Alexander Förtsch.
Automating Air Suspension Connector Production
The manufacturing process for vehicle air suspension connectors demonstrates the system’s capacity for complex, unattended operations. The production cycle begins with pin preparation and the injection molding of glass-fiber-reinforced polyamide connector housings with pressed-in contact pins. The Wittmann W828 linear robot demolds the housings, transfers them to automated post-processing where pins are joined with the housings, and subjects the finished assemblies to a 100 percent camera inspection, as detailed by continuous improvement process manager Manuel Rommel.
Integration and Setup Time Reductions
By utilizing the Wittmann linear robot as the master controller for downstream workstations, Rauschert eliminated the need for external secondary control units. Rommel noted that Wittmann’s open system architecture was the sole offering among evaluated robot manufacturers that provided an integrated solution without auxiliary controls. This setup cut setup frequency impacts, enabling the night shift—typically staffed by a single setup technician—to initiate new production lots simply by loading pre-existing programs without manual coding, according to Förtsch. Furthermore, replacing legacy six-axis robots with linear units removed the need for time-consuming physical teaching processes after tooling changes.
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