Posted to News on 11th May 2008, 00:00
Self pierce rivets bring in the sun
Self pierce rivet manufacturer Henrob has put together a robotic assembly cell for the production of a car sunroof. The entire cell has been designed and developed at Henrob's Deeside plant in Flintshire. The cell consists of an ABB robot, a Henrob hydraulically powered riveting system with tape fed rivets and a bespoke pneumatic turntable to place the sunroof components prior to riveting.
As one sunroof is being riveted together an operative has time to remove a completed assembly from the turntable and re-load the jig with the next set of components ready for the next assembly cycle. The whole cell has been developed to produce two variants of the sunroof as the OEM will use the sunroof design on two different vehicles. It is estimated that 120,000 units will be built per year, with eight self pierce rivets per assembly.
The OEM specified self pierce rivets (SPR) because of the strength characteristics they can offer and their ability to join dissimilar materials. In the case of the sunroof the assembly is joining 2.0mm aluminium to 1.0mm steel. In addition to these benefits, as SPR does not need a pre-hole, it eliminated drilling, swarf and alignment issues. Further, SPR does not create heat, sparks or fumes and is a low noise, environmentally friendly process.
