The design and simulation of automation of motorcycle’s ID-Number plate manufacturing process

Abstract

Motorcycles are the most affordable and favorable mean of transportation now days in Indonesia, especially in the villages. The sale of motor cycle in 2012 was around 7 to 8 million units. This fast growing market of motorcycles affects the speed of components producing as well as the motorcycle ID (identification) number plate manufacturing. Meanwhile this manufacturing process is now carried out using manual method which is very slow, unreliable, inaccurate and time consuming. Printing imperfectness is mainly caused by human errors. This condition triggers up the idea to design and to prepare a simulation package for automating the process of making and printing motorcycle’s ID number. The design was based on the adjustable date stamp normally used by the stationary clerks. Every time the ID number is defined for each motorcycle, than information contained related to place where it is registered, ID number itself, expired date and so on is automatically fed to the system controller. The controller will automatically set the pressing dies and then to expose the data onto a prepared Aluminum plate. A simple material handling system is designed to support this system by providing a new plate and take away the exposed one. Two simple robot arms are assigned the task to bring the new plate into the pressing area and to take out the finish one out of the dies. All of this synchronization is programmed within a robotic work cell simulation package. Some simulations results have demonstrated the ability of the design to deal with variety in ID numbers and amount of plate to be printed in one batch.