Development of an industrial rf tagging technology to enable automa ted and flexible manufacture of "one-off" and small batch products

Informations projet

N° de convention de subvention: BRST985185

Projet clôturé

Date de début 1 Février 1998

Date de fin 31 Janvier 2000

Financé au titre de

• Specific research and technological development programme in the field of industrial and materials technologies, 1994-1998

Coût total € 0,00

Contribution de l’UE Aucune donnée

Coordonné par

James Engineering
United Kingdom

Résultats exploitables

HardTag - Development of an Industrial RF tagging technology to enable automated manufacture of "One-Off" and small batch products

The production of small batch or one-off parts has traditionally been hindered by the inefficiencies of machine tool set-up time and the difficulties associated with synchronised product data during the production process. Hazlin of Ludlow and James Engineering in association with Pera, sought to rectify this situation by the novel application of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags to small batch production situations. Together they have developed a system that automatically configures and set ups any CNC machine tools ready for the next part with minimal operator intervention. This significantly de-skilled the operation of CNC wood routing tools and removed the opportunity of operator error. Reichenbacher, a machine tool manufacturer, working with Hazlin, have configured their CNC machine tool such that ‘set-up and cut’ operations were reduced to the pressing of a single button. The system has been designed to be generic, such that the technology can be applied to any CNC machine tools such as: lathes, millers, lasers, water jet, routers, robots etc. Avonwood Developments, a specialised tag manufacturer, are developing the generic market places for the system.