Production Work In The Orbitform Lab
Posted on 09/18/2017 | by The Orbitform Blog Team
A midwest USA based manufacturer of healthcare industry furniture, learning facility desks, church chairs, and hospital beds was in a bind. They had received large orders for their products, but they did not have riveting nor assembly production capacity to meet the timeline of their customer. Orbitform stepped in to help the furniture manufacturer successfully fulfill the order by setting up a small production cell in Orbitform’s lab and then assembling linkages for a few weeks.
The product to be assembled was comprised of 4 heavy duty metal linkages that were to be fastened together via 4 solid rivets. Prior to inserting each rivet a bushing was to be placed inside the holes on the stamped metal linkages. The rotational effort of each joint was critical thus an Orbitform orbital forming machine was chosen to perform the cold forming of each rivet. Process monitoring with a load cell and LVDT was used to verify the appropriate downward forming force and metal deformation depth was achieved at each riveted joint. Orbitform integrates process monitoring and process control sensors and programming intelligence in many of the machines we build to ensure product quality, safety, and robustness.
The hospital bed frame linkage assemblies needed to be assembled as soon as possible so the Orbitform team went to work choosing the orbital forming peen, building several part holding fixtures, testing the riveting process, and figuring out a work process flow. Within days of Orbitform receiving the call from the customer, Orbitform was riveting mechanism assemblies and shipping them to the customer’s final assembly facility.
We don’t often do production work at Orbitform, but from time to time our customers need this type of support. We are always running a few parts to about 100 parts in order to determine which Orbitform orbital forming, impact riveting, self pierce riveting, or hot upset riveting machine is best suited for our customer’s product assembly needs, but several thousand piece product projects are less common. Even though it is not common, we will always do what we can to help.
If you find yourself needing product assembly support, riveting process prototyping, or assembly operations assistance, please contact us by clicking here.