When it opened its Wrzesnia, Poland, plant in late 2016 – less than two years after launching construction – Volkswagen (VW) had two goals: build VW Crafter delivery vans and push automotive manufacturing technology limits.
“The plant in Wrzesnia is a role model for European transporter construction – state-of-the-art technology yet environmentally efficient at the same time,” plant CEO Jens Ocksen explains.
Configurable vehicle bodies and equipment variants are key to commercial vans, so VW officials planned for 70% of Crafter production to be made-to-measure solutions, requiring extensive automation at the plant. To implement the wide range of variants and individual orders, 430 robots carry out 68% of welding and gluing procedures in the body shop as well as material transport tasks. The automation level in the paint shop is 65%.
Given the 1,100 equipment variants of VW Crafters that can be configured, the range of parts to be measured is vast: underbody, front end, closed and open bodies, single-cab, double-cab, etc. To accommodate high-volumes of parts and vehicles requiring measurement, VW plant designers built a 58,000ft2 (5,400m2) measuring hall, integrated into the body manufacturing line close to production.
German metrology equipment supplier GOM, represented in North American by Capture 3D, has several systems in the facility – two Series 6 ATOS ScanBox systems, three double robot measuring cells, and several mobile optical measuring machines. The machines inspect assembly modules and body shells through to completely painted bodies. Everything is designed for measuring vehicles up to 23ft (7m) long and almost 10ft (3m) tall. Optical systems offer 3D geometry checks, including border lines and hole pattern by comparing nominal and actual data.
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From the August/September 2017 issue of Today’s Motor Vehicles.