Automotive Door Handle Position Sensor Assembly & Inspection

Challenge: Perform a series of assembly and inspection operations for an automotive door handle position sensor.

Solution: Four semi-automatic machines, which rely on an operator for loading and unloading, are equipped with guarding, work tables, and multiple safety features. The operator places parts into the appropriate nests and closes a drawer to start the machine. The machine then performs various assembly and testing tasks before returning the part to the operator. Any bad parts are sequestered in a lock box under the table. Assembly operations include:

• Magnet installation into plastic housing
• Locking ring installation onto plastic housing
• Pin insertion into plastic housing
• IC chip insertion into plastic housing

Various assembly tasks are performed with custom tooling for each part with Cartesian robot pick and place units to move parts through the cell. Additional operations include:

• LVDT height checks
• Magnet polarity check
• Machine Vision inspection
• Laser marking

All four machines meet the customer’s strict safety requirements using SISTEMA (Safety Integrity Software Tool for the Evaluation of Machine Applications) software.