The design and development of high volume and high precision flexible stitcher assembly machines

Abstract

The rapid changes in a product and short leadtime to the market have resulted in many companies moving towards rapid prototyping in molds, dies and machines. Especially in the area of manufacturing, companies are not depending on manual processes involving a large number of operators to assemble a product. Its has many impeding quality problems, overhead costs and the unpredictable labour shortages are making it unattractive to manufacture in Singapore. Hence, companies tried to develop what were termed as generic machines which can assemble all products or at least most of one product family. The generic machines in the connector industries can be divided into gang and stitcher machines. The dissertation will concentrate on the cross stitch machine. It is one of the most commonly used method of assembly in Molex and the connector industry.