Gantries pick up a delicate load for Pilkington Micronics

At its Deeside plant in North Wales, Pilkington Micronics produces 0.4‐4mm glass panels for use in LCD and emissive displays for watches, calculators and laptop computers. The material for these panels is cut to size, ground and packed at Deeside. Describes the automation of the packing operations on three purpose‐built machines designed and developed by the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Research Institute (AMTRI). It was found that dedicated two‐axis electric drive gantry loaders most efficiently perform the process of stacking the glass sheets interleaved with special non‐contaminating paper. AMTRI was able to use experience with the first machine, which uses three gantries, to simplify the design of the second and third machines that use just one gantry each. The result is easier, with faster set‐ups, while maintaining the capability to meet the maximum cycle time set by Pilkington Micronics.