Objective
High volume automotive production (such as body-in-white construction) operations rely heavily on RSW (resistance spot welding), and suffer significant losses of output (and resulting revenue) as a consequence of frequent production line stoppages. These stoppages are predominantly caused by weld quality issues, which in turn arise from poor maintenance of consumable ‘tips’ on RSW guns.
SmartDress will develop a fully automated adaptive control system that will optimise, monitor and maintain tip quality in these applications. This will minimise line stoppages and give provide our consortium of tier 2/3 SME automotive suppliers with an IP protectable, ‘high-tech’ product, enabling us to protect and expand our market share – which is shrinking due to competition from low-labour rate competitor countries.
Another key feature of the SmartDress system will be that it will allow cost-competitive manufacture of aluminium (not currently commercially viable), which will enable lower cost aluminium vehicle manufacture. This could have very large potential impact on CO2 emissions (due to vehicle light-weighting).
Fields of science
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
FP7-SME-2011
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
BSG-SME - Research for SMEsCoordinator
10139 TORINO
Italy