Industrial Application Studies of a New Standard FAA Machine

Abstract

The MARK III Flexible Automatic Assembly (FAA) cell, first presented in 1994, was a conceptual breakthrough since it was designed to minimise the inherent risks of such applications. This cell was developed into a standard FAA machine comprising of a general Hardware and software platform. The MARK III FAA cell is stepwise upgradeable and greatly reduces the recurrent costs. MARK III supports stepwise automisation. The MARK III uses FACE, a new programming and control system which greatly reduces the programming costs. The article will analyse three application studies of this standard assembly machine, carried out for major Swedish companies.