An Ingenious and Innovative Piston Ring Assembly Station
With a specialized assembly station we are helping a renowned piston manufacturer in the error-free assembly of an innovative piston ring with a specific geometric form.
Today, the assembly of piston rings is mostly automated. This saves personnel costs and minimizes production errors. But what if you had developed an innovative piston ring for which no automated production technology was available? Our customer knew the answer immediately: This is a job for Harrandt.
Starting Point and Challenge
For a new application in the field of boat engines, our customer developed an innovative piston ring. In order to avoid consequential damage to the engine, the assembly of the ring needed to be, as usual, fully automatic and without manual reworking. However, since this ring was an unprecedented design with special geometric properties, assembly couldn’t be carried out on the existing stations. The magazine for storing the piston rings, the separating mechanism and the assembly station were not suitable for the newly developed piston rings with protruding hooks - and needed to be redesigned.
Our Solution
We designed a new assembly station, the core of which is a specially developed piston ring magazine that is twisted spirally and can store and precisely separate the new rings. In order to then fit the piston rings reliably into the recesses provided, the pistons can be specifically aligned prior to assembly and scanned with a laser measuring system to detect the recess in the piston ring groove. Although there were several design changes to the piston and piston rings during the development phase, we were finally able to integrate the test station into the new piston ring assembly module without delay and put it into operation at the customer's site.
Development, testing and production of a complete ring assembly module without functional specification - including an easily understandable description of tasks and functions.
The Result
The new piston ring assembly module from Harrandt enables the fully automatic assembly of these piston rings with their special geometric form. For our customer that means lower personnel costs while productivity and quality remain at the accustomed high standards expected from Harrandt machines. Another added value: The module was built in such a way that all conventional piston rings can still be installed - and our customer has unlimited flexibility during the assembly process.