Low cost industrial automation

Qualitetch are a UK-based manufacturer of specialised metal components for products ranging from satellites to hairdryers. Their implementation of Eva uses a four cup vacuum gripper to safely and accurately pick up metal sheets and place them on a conveyor belt. Watch the video to hear how their story of working with Eva, and get some ideas about automating your own production line.

Nextgen Technology is a multinational company headquartered in the UK. They provide automated testing and fault analysis services, helping their customers validate and launch new products in industries from automotive to smartphone development.

Nextgen were drawn to Eva for its RESTful API, ease of use and affordability. Today they’re using Eva to add physical interaction to their proprietary testing platform ATAM – allowing them to simulate real end user behaviour.

In this application, the conveyor belt acts as a PLC. When a product  is detected by the light gate, the conveyor belt stops, allowing one Eva to take a photo of the top of the can using a Cognex smart camera. Based on whether or not the logo on the can has been defaced, the second Eva then picks up the can and places it into the correct pass/fail lane, resuming the movement of the conveyor belt. You can read more about this use case on our blog.

In this example, Eva is integrated with a smart camera (Cognex), which identifies the two different types of bottles – with and without a cap – and instructs Eva on the correct sorting bin to use. The pick-up points and coordinates of the small bottles are not pre-programmed, as evidenced by the manual shuffling that occurs towards the end of the video. Instead, Eva receives the coordinates of each bottle directly from the camera.