Pushing past the brink

July 2023 Editor's Choice Motion Control & Drives

Brink Towing Systems is the global leader in developing and manufacturing towbars. Since the end of the pandemic, many of the car brands it supplies have ramped up production to keep up with rising demand. For Brink, this means finding new ways to fulfil customer orders, which already see the towbar specialist manufacture north of 160 000 towbars per year for South Africa, the UK, Europe and Thailand.

Brink’s modern towbar manufacturing facility is situated in Pietermaritzburg, and is equipped with a significant number of Yaskawa robotic welding cells. The cell is comprised of two stations where it has two GP25 robots running in synchronised motion with a set of positioners, all housed in a protective enclosure. “For operators, using the system is simple − load the part, press the button, and the doors will close,” explains Devon Prinsloo, national project manager at Yaskawa Southern Africa. “They run the two stations in parallel so that there’s always an active part getting loaded and unloaded. This reduces their cycle time in the long run.”

Since the system’s deployment, Brink has seen a dramatic increase in production, helping it meet demands that were otherwise unattainable before the introduction of automated cells to run the operation. And if car production rates are the benchmark, the towbar leader won’t be slowing down anytime soon. In fact, Brink has recently installed its fifth, and soon its sixth, cell from Yaskawa.

Designing and installing custom solutions for niche manufacturing operations is no easy task, but Yaskawa has a long history of problem-solving and optimising production lines for robotic integration. “Brink uses a water-cooled torch welding system,” says Prinsloo. “The booth itself was designed by one of our suppliers, Dynamik, but for the most part we set up the entire system, including writing the PLC program and robot program.”

In this case, Brink is also well-versed with the robot, so they perform live programming on-site with extensive use of MotoSim. The entire system is controlled using Profinet, Ethernet IP and Profisafe. Profinet is an open industrial ethernet solution based on international standards. It is specifically designed for collecting data from, and controlling equipment in, industrial systems with a particular strength in delivering data under time constraints.

With the re-emergence of high demand in the global economy across different sectors, manufacturers are pushing the boundaries of how automation can add accuracy, efficiency, productivity, and return on investment for their operations by partnering with experts like Yaskawa.

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