Truck and trailer manufacturing is moving away from standard designs, and more and more inclined toward production on demand. Instead of automating each seperate production step, KRANENDONK has engineered a integrated line for automatic assembly and welding of trailers.
Automated trailer manufacturing
This trailer production line is specially engineered to automatically assemble and weld aluminum trailers from profiles and plates till complete trailers. The production line is split up in two independent lines with five stations to obtain the highest level of passage. Due to ARAC cell control the complete line is integrated and easy to operate. Also by using a CAD/CAM interface, various product dimensions are possible and production will be order driven.
The production line consists of five stations with there own tasks:
Stiffener assembly
A pallet with stiffeners can be loaded on to the assembly wagon and automatically travels to the next position where the next stiffer will be positioned. By having an assembly wagon the travel distances for the gantry will be reduced which enables a better cycle time.
Stiffener horizontal welding
In addition to the positioning of the stiffeners by the 
assembly wagon the stiffener welding gantry also performs the stitch welding. To do the welding the stiffener welding gantry is equipped with 4 welding torches. Each individual torch can rotate, move up and down and travel transversal along the positioning beam.
Stiffener contour welding
For the actual welding of sides and bottoms 4 robot traveling columns will be placed. 2 Columns are working on one set of track with a length of 65 meter The columns will be equipped with a 1,5 meter shift to reach the full 2,7 meter of the widest product. The control of the shift and the longitudinal traveling along the track are integrated in the robot controller.
To obtain a high quality it is necessary to weld both sides of the panels. Therefore turning units will be placed between the robot traveling gantries.
For the welding of side to bottom connections, a robot on a trolley will be delivered. One trolley can drive over 4 sets of rails, 2 on each side of each line. In order to hold the walls up during welding, Kranendonk will supply 2 clamps to hold the walls, one for the front and one for the back.
Read more: article on trailer production
