CenterLine Issued High Speed Fastener Welding Patent
CenterLine Limited (Windsor, ON) announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued U.S. Patent 9,895,775 for their High Speed Fastener Welding System. This innovative production assembly equipment integrates both process and product improvements resulting in a fastener welding solution that is exceptionally suited to handling multiple applications with one machine. “This development encapsulates our best practices and lessons learned used to overcome the challenges our customers face with production fastener welding,” stated Larry Koscielski, the vice president of process and technology development at CenterLine. “Our High Speed system has optimized all of the motions of the process while raising the bar on part quality, ease of maintenance and production flexibility. This system is a game changer for any manufacturer involved with fastener welding.“
Extensive design, development and field beta testing has resulted in a system that boasts important key benefits to customers including:
- Vast improvements in overall cycle times and comprehensive error-proofing features to optimize quality and production output.
- The capability to quickly re-configure the system for new part structures to maximize equipment flexibility and up-time. The system can also be modified and/or updated to satisfy new application conditions or completely new projects.
- The ability to disassociate the operator work from the production process cadence to remove cycle time dependency from the operator and reduce an employee’s exposure to repetitive motions.
As of June 1, CenterLine has delivered over 30 of these systems to various Tier 1 facilities in North America. Some of these systems are processing over 8,000 fasteners per day. In some systems, up to 38 different parts are processed with minimal changeover. The High Speed Fastener Welding System represents a significant evolution in CenterLine’s existing industry leading technology and is consistent with their corporate vision to “develop, produce, and deploy innovative, cost-effective, trusted and complete solutions that enable our customers to exceed their operational, customer and profit commitments, while minimizing their risk and stress”.
Integral components of the High Speed Fastener Welding System include the PinPoint Solution, the Quick Fastener Placement Unit (QFP) and the SoftMount Welding Gun package(s). To date, CenterLine has been awarded over 82 patents and has numerous North American and international patents pending.
