Assembly In Action: Unovis Solutions builds assembly machines for a variety of electronics manufacturers serving the automotive, medical and semiconductor industries.

The Polaris Jr. is expressly designed to accommodate a wide range of conveyor sizes to meet the needs of a variety of manufacturers.

Assembly In Action: Unovis Solutions (Binghamton, NY) builds assembly machines for a variety of electronics manufacturers serving the automotive, medical and semiconductor industries. The company’s Polaris line of assembly machines employs flexible assembly cells, which serve as the base automation units for various types of assembly applications.

One of these models, the Polaris Jr., is expressly designed to accommodate a wide range of conveyor sizes to meet the needs of different manufacturers. Central to this design concept is the Quickdraw conveyor line from material handling equipment manufacturer MagStar Technologies (Hopkins, MN). Scalable, flexible, robust and compact, the systems play an integral role in the success of the system.

“Quickdraw offers us a nonlinear way of transferring products in an automated process, allowing us to integrate lifts, turns and loops in the conveyor’s path to meet our clients’ specific needs,” says Unovis Solutions director of marketing Jacques Coderre. “It is used primarily in automotive applications, because of the system’s ability to handle heavy components.”

As an added benefit, Unovis application engineer Tom Lanuti says the conveyor’s design is such that it helps contain the spread of debris in dusty or dirty environments, like those often found in the automotive industry.

“Magstar’s slip rollers rotate on their own, so that if contamination occurs locally, it remains localized in that single section of the conveyor,” Lanuti says. “With alternative solutions, if something falls onto the conveyor, anything on that conveyor could transfer down the line. Anything that falls onto Quickdraw’s roller stays put.”

The system’s robust operation has also proven particularly effective in applications where Unovis’ customers require repair loops to be integrated into the system.

“Many of our customers will have operations done on a fixtured subassembly or on an end-product directly,” Lanuti says. “We’ll take the fixture or end-product off the Quickdraw, perform a task such as test, and if bad, transfer off the line and shuttle out to a reject or repair area.”

For more on conveyors and material transfer systems, call 800-473-8837 or visitwww.magstar.com.

For more on electronics assembly machines, call 607-779-3800 or visitwww.unovis-solutions.com.