ATS
During my CO-OP at ATS, I worked in their applications department of the Life Sciences division as a mechanical engineer. ATS Life Sciences group deals primarily in custom-made automated manufacturing solutions for pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Being a part of the applications team meant I got first-hand exposure to the front end of the business from working on 7 figure proposals to creating custom high-speed ROM designs.
Pen injector manufacturing has become a big market for ATS. Moreover, due to their unique geometry, it is extremely difficult to apply labels at high speed. This gave me the opportunity to create ATS's first-ever high-speed labeler prototype for pen injectors. With the main goal of achieving one revolution within a 500-millisecond time frame. This would allow ATS to reach 960 parts per minute production for labeling. The design I created utilized a ball screw and cam follower method. In this design, the bottom end of the screw shaft was fixed to a bracket that contained the cam follower which fixed the screw radially. Moreover, the ball nut was fixed axially via a hollow shaft. The main idea is that the cam follower would traverse a profile which would drive the shaft upwards which would cause the ball nut to rotate with the hollow shaft. Then, a coupling could connect the hollow shaft to a nest that holds the pen. To achieve this design, three main sub-assemblies were used. Firstly, was the Rail
Assembly, which acted as the spine of the system that connects the two other sub-assemblies through the use of a rectangular machined block called the rail mount. The rail mount is designed to hold a linear rail, which would act as the main linear stabilizer for the ball screw and cam. Secondly, was the Shaft Assembly, which was centered around the hollow shaft which fixes the ball nut axially. The Shaft Assembly utilizes a cross-roller bearing and a lock nut design to hold the assembly together. Lastly, the Cam Assembly consisted of a bracket that gave a mounting point for the linear rail blocks, the screw shaft, and the cam follower. With the cam follower being a repurposed SuperTrak wheel.
Below are images of the drawings I created for the high-speed labeler project. Here I had to learn proper toleranceing guidelines for the cross roller bearing as well as for the rail mount to prevent an unfavorable tolerance stack up.
Another project I worked on utilized ATS's Symphoni line, which is a plug-and-play robotic modules assembly line. A system that is adaptable and refined enough to reach anywhere from 40 to 1,000 parts per minute, which maintains the same control and precision throughout the varying speeds. The proposal I worked on involved a 3 piece pick and place of a part from a rotating disk to an ATS SuperTrak Pallet. To reach the necessary speeds for this pick and place I was required to create motion profiles and simulations to ensure the dynamics of the machine components was possible.
A more obscure project I had the chance to work on was a foam loaf slicer. Here a metre-long foam loaf with variable width and height would be placed into the chamber via a conveyor or an operator. Thereafter, through the use of ball screws and linear guides, the chamber would close shut and conform to the size of the loaf. Moreover, a 3-axis gantry would be used to hold a linear motor. This linear motor would then be fixed with a cutting instrument, which would be used to slice the foam. Furthermore, a ball screw fixed with a thin aluminum plate would be used as a backstop to push the foam forward after each slice. This project proved quite difficult due to the constraints the foam imposed. As the cuts needed to be only a few mm thick, thus a depth-locating method for a pliable substance proved to be a fun challenge. To add, I gained a lot of experience in motor sizing due to the high speeds that were required to slice the foam in a short time frame.