Case study
RV awnings
THE PROJECT
A leading manufacturer of accessories for recreational vehicles requested the development of a multi-head welding machine for high-volume production of PVC-coated awnings.
This machine was required work straight off the mother-roll and make a pocket with rope insert on both sides of the fabric. Occasionally, it would be required to weld a 50 cm wide strip to the mother roll. The seams had to be both extremely strong and aesthetically pleasing. The pocket around the rope insert would have to be tight and without crinkles.
THE PROCESS
We built a machine based on our SM-450-SA multi-sealer, customized with a welding head with hot air technology.
This machine feeds the PVC-coated fabric from a heavy duty, motorized unwinding station with automatic edge correction and digital fabric tension control.
To increase the customer’s manufacturing efficiency and reduce the downtimes as much as possible, we installed a system that accommodates two jumbo rolls. This way, when the first roll finishes, the operator can insert a new roll while the machine is still processing the first one.
We installed two high-power welding heads on the left and right sides of the tool bridge to fold the fabric into a pocket and insert the rope that is used to attach the fabric to the awning structure. As the machine works at extremely high speeds, our team integrated a cross-cutting station with conveyor belt and travelling cutting tool so that the machine would not have to stop or slow down for the crosscut. The motion of the bridge that carries the crosscutting tool is synchronized with the forward movement of the conveyor belt, so that the awning and the cross cutter move at the same speed.
Behind the cross-cutting station, a conveyor belt transports the ready-made awning towards its final station: a grip-and-pull system that stacks the ready-made awnings onto a trolley that automatically rolls to the packing area once full. Here all awnings are tested and packaged to be shipped to customers.
To optimize their production line, we developed a resourceful system that automatically recognizes flaws in the fabric before it is fed into the machine. To save fabric, our custom developed software makes sure that the part with the flaw is as small as possible. After the cut, the flawed fabric is automatically discarded.
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