Low Cost Automation by Material Handling System for Short Distance Material Transfer

The current financial crisis faced all over the world has posed tremendous challenges on the manufacturing organisations. Even at low volumes, and large variety, they have to be competitive with minimum investment. Low-cost automation can play an important role in this situation. Material handling and logistics are expensive operations which comprise of 10% to 80% of product cost and this tends to rise for inexpensive products. It is always advisable to minimize or if possible eliminate operator’s involvement in transferring materials. This work is aimed at developing a simple, compact and robust material handling equipment that would suit almost any short distance material transfer task and create some degree of automation around the existing equipment and tools. Such a system would eliminate the need of power conveyors, chutes or roller conveyors that need operator attention and picking of jobs by hand to transfer it between two stations. The system would be of great use in manufacturing lines having u type or zigzag type layouts where human handling of jobs is presently unavoidable, as use of powered conveyors or gravity conveyors cause interruption in line operations. For design of parts detail design is done and dimensions thus obtained are compared to next highest dimension which are readily available in market. This simplifies the assembly as well as post production servicing work.