A medical device manufacturer approached us recently with another complex application.  Their label includes four sections.  The center section is approximately 20mm in diameter.  There are four outside sections that extend out from the center section by approximately 6mm and each outer section covers roughly 45 degrees of the circumference spaced equally about the circumference.  Each outside section is attached to the center section by two very small tabs.  This label construction is nothing special for our systems.  We regularly handle odd-shaped components and/or process multiple components on a single cycle.  What makes this application particularly noteworthy is the requirement that this label be applied to the inside of the minor diameter of a conical housing and that the center section be held ‘flat’, suspended in air just below the minor diameter, while the four outside sections be laminated to the inside walls of the conical housing.  The very small tabs that connect the four outer sections to the center section must not be damaged during installation, they must remain connected. 

This is a case that required a ‘proof of concept’ test.  Based on our initial review of the project we believed we had a solid concept for application but couldn’t guarantee the process without testing.  Our customer agreed to order a ‘proof of concept’ tooling package and sampling.  This allowed us to build the complex tooling required to truly test the process and to test it on an actual PL100 machine without requiring them to fully invest in the machine itself.  It also appropriately placed the costs of tooling development with the customer. 

In the end we determined that with a single tool and no special mechanisms that we could remove the label from the liner per the standard process delivered by our PL100 and then place the label onto the housing in a simple vertical stroke of the Tamp.   The insertion of our vacuum chuck tool into the conical housing resulted in the lamination of the four outer sections onto the inside walls of the housing.  The small tabs acted as very small hinges which allowed the center section to remain flat, suspended in the correct attitude and with no wrinkling or deformation.  Our customer had worked independently for quite some time attempting to develop this process unsuccessfully until they found Nautilus Systems Inc.  In the end our success allowed them to successfully identify a process for assembly of a critical component of their medical device.  We thank them for the opportunity and offer our services to other customers in the future.  Please think of Nautilus Systems Inc. for all of your adhesive component placement needs!

Imagine a label of approximately 50 x 75mm in size.  Now imagine that the label includes four small holes, one near each corner of the label.  The small holes are less than 2mm in diameter.  Now factor in that the label manufacturer only ‘guarantees’ that those hole positions will be maintained with a tolerance of +/- 0.2mm through the die-cut process.  Got it?  Finally, realize that the customer requires the label to be applied to their substrate such that those 2mm holes line up to 2mm holes on the substrate with a tolerance of 0.1mm concentricity!  Impossible, right?  Our PL Series of applicators are proven to provide very tight tolerance and very tight placement repeatability (as good as +/- 0.05mm) but if the customer requires a 6 sigma process with alignment of all four holes how can our system possibly provide a success? 

The answer: through creativity and a focus on delivering a successful result.  Yes, we did have an application exactly as described and yes we did deliver a successful system implementation using our PL Applicator with the EP package for Extreme Precision.  But we also used ‘outside of the box’ thinking to bring it all together. 

In this case we used precision locate pins to fixture the substrate at the four critical locations.  The pins were a slip fit to the substrate and incorporated a lead-in feature to allow easy loading of the substrate.  The PL Applicator, by its standard process, was used to feed and peel the label from the liner.  We added the ‘twist’ as we describe next.  The PL Tamp extends the label down to a position less than 1mm above the substrate.  Since the PL Applicator always feeds the label very precisely we can be certain that the fixture locate pins, which incorporate a slight lead-in and extend more than 1mm above the surface of the substrate, will enter the corresponding holes on the label.  We included clearance holes on the vacuum chuck so that there would be no interference with the pins.  We then turn off the vacuum, allowing the label to ‘fall’ onto the pins so that it is automatically aligned perfectly concentric to those pins.  We then allow the Tamp to extend the additional 1mm so that it presses the label down onto the substrate.  A slight amount of flexibility in the label allows it to conform to the locations that we have physically dictated by use of the pins.  Not only that, but the substrate and label are easily removed from the fixture even with the tight tolerances. 

Our retracting peel edge technology was initially developed to provide a highly reliable and highly accurate process for removing die-cut adhesive components from a continuous web (liner) and placing them accurately onto an assembly or other substrate.  Customers tended to be from high-tech industries with applications that no other technology could possibly handle.  That changed with the introduction of our PL series of Applicators.  As we continuously improved our processes, invested in better equipment and methods for manufacturing and assembly, and improved and simplified our designs we arrived at a position where we could provide our technology at a level of affordability nearly identical to standard ‘labelers’.  Labelers are really only appropriate for rectangular labels of decent size and while they’ll state that they can place items with +/- 0.75mm repeatability it is questionable what type of process capability will be the result.  Labelers provide a process of feeding a component over a peeling edge and using a combination of air puffs and vacuum to transfer the label onto a vacuum head.  We call their process ‘Flutter, Float, Levitate, and Hope’ due to the large number of variables in the setup and the variability in the actual placement results.  Our PL series of Applicators has no problem with any shape of component including Hang Tabs, which come in very odd shapes.  Some Hang Tabs are shaped like hooks; others have features and thru-holes that can be folded to provide the ‘hanger’ features.  Our PL series handles all of these equally well as a result of our patented retracting blade peel technology which we refer to as ‘Capture, Peel, Place’.  In our systems the component is always controlled either by its attachment to the web or by being positively captured by our vacuum head.  We never leave anything to chance.  In one application a customer required a Hang Tab to wrap around one side of a plastic housing that had a curved surface.  That system was setup for semi-automatic operation and worked wonderfully.  Another customer needed to apply Hang Tabs to a flat pad of paper in a semi-auto fashion, again everything worked with great results.  A more sophisticated requirement was brought by a customer with a highly automated bakery and packaging operation.  They needed the Hang Tabs applied, two per cycle, on baked goods in a plastic wrapper.  We provided two PL100i units on stands that positioned them over the bakery conveyor and through our configured I/O cable they were able to program their conveyor system to trigger the hang tab application on each cycle.  This system was replicated on another line as well.  These are just some of the typical requirements for Hang Tab application.  If you have requirements of this kind please contact Nautilus Systems, Inc. for further assistance.  Remember, it is always better to ‘Capture, Peel, Place’ than it is to ‘Flutter, Float, Levitate, and Hope’!