Chong Geun Kim, the CEO at PETRA Corp. Ltd, the WITTMANN Group's representatives in Korea, based in Yongin.
View of an open injection molding machine: Prior to installation of the WITTMANN robot at automotive component manufacturer MGS, metal parts had to be inserted into the cavity by hand.
In Yongin, south of Seoul, is the headquarters of PETRA Corp. Ltd., representatives for the WITTMANN Group in South Korea.
Founded as recently as 2014, the company already counts many renowned Korean industrial concerns among its customers.
The five employees at PETRA make up a small, but tight-knit team, and are all the more effective because of it. In their five year of business, they made more than a million euros. For its customers, PETRA is highly regarded for the total reliability of its products and its great price/performance ratio – and not least for their readiness to tackle the most varied of assignments.
Thir customers include Namdo Mold Corporation, Hansung Solutec, Faurecia Korea and Wonil Hydraulic, to name just a few.
Automation of a plastic frame
In order to automate an MGS injection molding machine, Petra supplied a W853 robot (a large piece of kit with a z-axis 4 m long) and WITTMANN W832 robot, both of which are equipped with the latest R8.3 robot control system.
Finished injection molded component: plastic frames for a sliding sun roof.
A special automation solution was to be implemented for MGS. The automotive supplier manufactures plastic frames for sliding sun roofs using injection molding. Thirty-two metal components in all need to be put inside the cavity in order to make this plastic component: 6 screws for the stationary part of the tool and 24 more metal parts (nuts, bolts, clamps and pins) in the moving half.
Insertion of all these parts, which was previously done manually, was now to be accomplished by robot. Apart from the savings in personnel costs (for three operators), the objective set was to reduce cycle times by a third (from 300 seconds to 200).
Now that the automation for the production of the plastic frames is running smoothly, it has actually reduced cycle times down to an outstanding 160 seconds – almost halving the time needed. The insertion of the 32 metal parts is handled by a WITTMANN W853 robot.
This project – just one example of the many PETRA can accomplish for its Korean customers demonstrates vividly the potential for savings that can be made with well thought-out automation systems. It will also certainly spread awareness of WITTMANN Group's presence in Korea.
