Custom Designed Bracket System

 Case Setting:

A leading manufacturer of quality rain gutter accessories and leaf protection approached Vibromatic for assistance with automating their process of manually inserting screws in to their gutter bracket products to achieve efficiencies for installers in the field. The gutter brackets were produced in 2 different lengths but with 8 different styles. They were designed to use 1 common screw.

Vibromatic worked with the customer to design a system that would allow an operator to manually place the bracket in a custom fixture and then touch two palm buttons which actuated the machine to secure the bracket, blow a screw from the supplied feeder bowl and then drive the screw into the bracket. Once the screw was secure in the bracket, a trap door would release the assembly down a chute and into a box.

Building upon the success of this assembly machine and the increased demand created for this “ready to install” product, the customer approached Vibromatic with the challenge of developing a system that could automate the entire process including the ability to fill multiple boxes at predetermined programmable and quantities.

The Result:

As an engineering driven company, Vibromatic went to work on designing and engineering a turn-key assembly system. Vibromatic developed  bowl capable of orienting and feeding (8) different styles of the gutter clips. Once the clip bowl was developed, Vibromatic engineering staff designed a method to bring the screw and bracket bowls together to produce an assembly system that assembled the screws to the brackets and then packaged them at a rate of 30 assemblies per minute.