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US 4,890,715 AGranted
Method of and a device for coding workpiece carriers in a production plant
OwnerWalter Stichtinventor
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OwnerWalter Stichtinventor
Estimating the term…
Workpiece carriers are fed to successive work stations along conveyor tracks at which stations work operations are performed on individual parts on the carrier and in which a defect signal is allocated when appropriate. After a work operation has been performed a coding member is left in a normal switching position corresponding to a defect coding or displaced into a switching position corresponding to an accept coding if the work operations performed were satisfactory. In a coding device displaceable coding elements are supported by a workpiece carrier and traverse a detector device at the work processing station and a switching element for displacing the coding element from a reject coding switch position to an accept coding switch position. Advantageously an accept coding is only secured by a deliberate action when satisfactory work processing has been completed and thus subsequent processing of defective parts is avoided simply and with great reliability.
An apparatus for coding workpiece carriers supporting assembly parts and fed to successive work processing stations arranged in a conveying direction along a conveyor track, at which stations the assembly parts are processed in a processing position, which comprises a displaceable coding element arranged on each one of the workpiece carriers in an initial switching position corresponding to a reject coding and displaceable to another switching position corresponding to an accept coding, a detector device preceding the processing position in the conveying direction at each one of the work processing stations for detecting the switching position of the coding element on a respective one of the workpiece carriers at said station, a switching element succeeding the detector device for displacing the coding element from the reject to the accept switching position, and a coding device succeeding the processing position in the conveying direction, the coding device comprising a switching element for displacing the coding element from the accept to the reject switching position, control means for activating said switching element if processing has been acceptably performed, whereby if processing has not been acceptably performed at a work processing station, the assembly parts on the workpiece carrier are no longer processed when fed to successive work processing stations or are fed to a delivery station for scrap parts or post processing.
A method for coding workpiece carriers supporting assembly parts and fed to successive work processing stations along a conveyor track, each one of the workpiece carriers having a coding element displaceable between a first switching position corresponding to an accept coding and a second switching position corresponding to a reject coding, which comprises the steps of initially feeding each workpiece carrier to a first one of the work processing stations with the coding element displaced into the first switching position, detecting the switching position at the first work processing station and displacing the coding element into the second switching position, performing processing at said station, monitoring said processing and displacing the coding element back to the first switching position if processing has been acceptably performed at the first work processing station while, if processing has not been acceptably performed, maintaining it in the second switching position, feeding the workpiece carrier to a succeeding work processing station, detecting the switching position at the succeeding work processing station and performing processing at the succeeding station only if the coding element is in the first switching position, displacing the coding element into the second switching position at the station where processing is performed, and displacing the coding element back to the first switching position after processing has been acceptably performed at the succeeding work processing station, whereby if processing has not been acceptably performed at a work processing station, the assembly parts on the workpiece carrier are no longer processed when fed to successive work processing stations or are fed to a delivery station for scrap parts or post processing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.