In Vietnam for over 20 years, the Caesar Sanitaryware Co. Ltd, which has its administrative offices in Taipei (Taiwan), develops and manufactures complete bathroom product lines that include everything from ceramics to faucets and bathtubs; today, it is one of Vietnam's top three sanitaryware manufacturers, with sales on the rise both in Vietnam and worldwide.
With a steadily growing output capacity, currently in excess of a million pieces per year, Caesar Sanitaryware is constantly investing in modern machinery and advanced technological research. Their goal is to improve product quality while bettering efficiency, lowering water consumption and giving their products a distinctively modern, eye-catching look.
It is this innovation-driven philosophy that has led Caesar Sanitaryware to sign a contract with Sacmi for the installation and testing of two automatic glazing lines at their plant in Ho Chi Minh City. Equipped with Gaiotto GA2000 and GA/OL robots, the lines also feature innovative dry filters for the spraying booths and new GDA80 spray guns.
The first glazing cell uses the tried and tested technology of the GA2000 robot, that is, a glazing robot that features not just self-learning but other consolidated programming functions (such as point-to-point and the formidable OFFLINE 7WD system, developed internally by Gaiotto engineers).
The second glazing cell, instead, has a GA/OL robot. While constructed on the same kinematics as the GA 2000, this machine is specifically dedicated to utilisation of OFFLINE 7WD software to create offline spraying programmes. Using OFFLINE 7WD software has innumerable advantages, such as:
- optimised cell efficiency, as there is no need to use the cell in production tests that would otherwise reduce efficiency in terms of actual manufacturing hours;
- increased surface quality thanks to accurate glaze thickness control;
- considerably less over-spray, with consequent glaze savings and shorter cycle times thanks to the elimination of wasteful multiple sweeps over already-sprayed areas.
The philosophy behind implementing robotics in Caesar's glazing department is as follows: to have one line equipped with GA2000 robots - to allow for ultra-fast, self-learning programme creation, allowing new articles to be put into production quickly or tests to be performed on a limited number of pieces - and the remaining glazing lines equipped with GA/OL robots that can operate with programmes created in self-learning mode by the GA2000 or with optimised programmes developed using offline techniques.
Both glazing cells have identical layouts: the glazing robot is positioned at the centre of a 4-position carousel which transfers sanitaryware items from the loading zone to the glazing booth in just five seconds. Piece loading/unloading on the 4-position carousel consists of a 4-station bar conveyor system to load pieces and a parallel belt conveyor to unload glazed pieces. Transfer from the conveyor to the rotary carousel occurs by way of an angular conveyor with 3 degrees of freedom. The glazed article foot cleaning device - with automatic sponging roller - is mounted on the parallel belts conveyor.
Caesar's technicians have also focused on innovation by applying (on both glazing lines) spray booth self-cleaning dry filter systems. The latter provide multiple advantages: recovery of glaze scattered by spray guns, lower maintenance and cleaning costs, elimination of filter wash waste waters and, consequently, huge savings on sludge recovery and disposal.