Automation of glue application on shoe soles

The shoe sole arrives at the robot for glue application on conveyer © WIPRO

Manual application of glue on shoe sole results in excess fills, under fills, glue being sprayed outside the sole. These result in glue wastage and inconsistent output. Automation with an industrial robot involves manual robot teaching for every variant so that the shoe sole can be precisely located. This is highly time consuming and requires skilled robot programmer to be available on floor.

Solution

Wipro developed a dynamic vision based solution that can detect any sole variant, generate the glue application trajectory and pass on the coordinates to the robot to apply the glue.

The shoe sole arrives at the robot for glue application on a conveyer. The sole is scanned on the move by a Photoneo vision camera. Wipro’s vision algorithm collects the point cloud data and generates the glue application trajectory.

Wipro’s robot camera interface software converts this trajectory into robot coordinates and communicates the same to the robot controller.

Once the coordinates are received, the robot moves along the trajectory and the Nordson glue dispensing system sprays the glue on the sole. This solution is agnostic of robot, camera, PLC and dispenser make and model. Any model can be integrated into the platform.

Benefits

• Quality improvement by over 40%
• Improved consistency over 75%
• 50% reduction in labor cost during manufacturing
• Reduced dependency on skilled robotic programmer (No need of training/ teaching for new sole type)
• Optimization of glue consumption
• Consistent quality deliverable