Development of a fixer attaching robot system

In this paper, we introduce a fixer attaching robot system which is used to attach several fixers to a TV cabinet. It is necessary to automate the fixer attaching process for two reasons. One is that the process is very harmful because very strong ultraviolet rays are used in that process. The other is that the productivity and the overall quality of the end-product are determined by the fixer attaching process. We proposed 9 candidates for the robot system to be used in the fixer attaching process. Then we simulated cycle time for each of the 9 candidates with considering physical constraints. We also considered other aspects such as the easiness of implementation, possible interference with other mechanical structure, and cost etc. to choose one of the 9 candidates. We implemented the chosen robot system and adopted it in a TV manufacturing process.