from raw tube material handling through to final
pre-paint finishing and quality inspection.
The cell was developed at Ingenium Integration’s
design centre in Manchester and then
manufactured and assembled in a facility at
its parent company Unison in Scarborough.
Ingenium Integration is also able to call upon
Unison’s expertise in all-electric tube bending
technology to help solve many of its customers’
fabrication problems. The company also holds
an integration license for the novel 5-axis parallel
kinematic machines (PKMs) developed by the
Swedish company Exechon. These are setting
new performance standards in robotics and
enable Ingenium Integration to create leadingedge automation solutions for a diverse array of
industrial applications.
About Ingenium Integration
Founded in 2012, Ingenium Integration specialises
in the conception, design and manufacture of
innovative and cost-effective manufacturing
automation solutions for the aerospace,
automotive, marine, nuclear and oil and gas
industries. These include complex jigs and fixtures,
remote handling systems, robotic cells with
transfer systems, tooling verification systems
with remote diagnostics and fully automated
production lines. Many of Ingenium Integration’s
automation solutions are based on highly
advanced five-axis parallel kinematic machines
(PKMs) developed by the Swedish company
Exechon. PKMs are setting new performance
standards in robotics and Ingenium Integration is
the first commercial company in the UK to acquire
an Exechon integrator’s licence, which provides
it with unrestricted access to this innovative
technology. Ingenium Integration operates as an
independent company within the Unison group of
companies through its Manchester office, though
its headquarters and main production facilities
are now located in the large Scarborough-based
factory that Unison opened in 2013.
Ingenium Integration bases many of its automated
production cell designs around all-electric tube
benders from Unison – its parent company. In
this instance, the system being built for H & E
Knowles is a 38 mm (1.5-inch) twin head model
from Unison’s all-electric Breeze range. It features
a left and right head on the same carriage that
facilitates precision symmetrical bending to
reduce cycle times with an off-set facility to enable
asymmetrical bending of the final tight bend at the
wheel end of wheelbarrow frames, while avoiding
collision with machine architecture during the
process.
The production cell comprises a tube bundle
loader, tube orientation station with seam
detection, intermediate dual-arm loader, bending
machine and several articulated robotic handlers,
as well as swaging, hole punching and cut to
length stations. It advances the state of the art in
this manufacturing sector by fully automating the
entire wheelbarrow frame manufacturing process,
21
TN MAY 2016