Technology of Lifting a Refrigerator out of Mold via Injecting the Polyurethane Foam Insulation

            One of the important refrigerator manufacturing processes is the injection of polyurethane foam insulation. In this process, the vacuum between the refrigerator and mold will occur and make lifting the refrigerator out of mold to send to the next manufacturing process become quite complicated because it requires the big force to lift the refrigerator out of mold although there is an Ejector under the mold to help lifting the refrigerator. Thai Toshiba Electric Industries Co., Ltd. has the lifting machines that are designed specifically for this kind of work but they can not support more productions. So the strong male employees must help lifting the refrigerator also and it’s very heavy job, then the problem of staff turnover at this point is quite high, including the problem of labor shortage in the current situation also. With the vision combined with the demand to improve the manufacturing process, Ms. Kanit Muangkrachang, Vice President of Thai Toshiba Electric Industries Co., Ltd. has a policy to make a project to improve the manufacturing process by focusing on the problem of “Process of Lifting a Refrigerator out of Mold via injecting the Polyurethane Foam Insulator” first.

The department brought the policy to discuss and set the performance of lifting machine suitable for the present and future. Therefore, we consulted with Bangkadi Industrial Park Co., Ltd. which was considered and presented the refrigerator lifting machine out of mold after injecting the polyurethane foam insulator of ABB Limited and Bangkadi Industrial Park Co., Ltd.

The ability of this machine can lift many types of refrigerators by using ABB robot’s technology combined with RFID system which can support the refrigerator manufacturing from 20 liters to 250 liters, and can support the manufacturing more than 200 refrigerators per hour. We use the ABB robot, version IRB6650S. It is a shelf robot model that can lift its base up to 3 meters. Then the robot can work under the base at a depth of nearly 2 meters, according to the working area where must lift the refrigerator out of mold from the downstairs and send it to the next production line at the upstairs. The robot has the handling capacity up to 200 kilograms in order to provide enough power to overcome the vacuum between the refrigerator and mold. By applying the “Conveyor Tracking” technology that is designed and developed by ABB and exclusively installed in ABB robot only, in this system, it makes the robot able to work along with the moving conveyor belt which provides the high performance and accuracy, and can synchronize its work with the conveyor system well.

From an interview Mr. Jaturachok Naksewi, Senior Manager of refrigerator department and Mr. Kampanat Patamasut, Manager of refrigerator department from Thai Toshiba Electric Industries Co., Ltd., they have the satisfaction in the performance of refrigerator lifting machine. This machine doesn’t cause the errors in the operation, no damage at the work piece, and can support more production rates, which conforms to the set goals. For more information, please call ABB Limited at 0 2665 1000 or go to www.abb.com