Passenger Safety Secured by Telsonic Ultrasonics

1st December 2009
Posted By : ES Admin
Passenger Safety Secured by Telsonic Ultrasonics
Occupant safety in motor vehicles has become a major consideration, and increasingly an influencing factor for the car buyer. Today, we take it for granted that a vehicle will have a driver and passenger airbag as a minimum, however many vehicles now also have side impact airbags installed within seats or doors and even curtain airbags which deploy from the roof of the cabin. As individuals, we have now come to expect that in the event of a collision, each airbag will operate flawlessly to minimise the risk of injury, giving little if any thought to the processes used to produce these safety critical items.
Ultrasonic welding – the safe solution

As a leading supplier ultrasonic technology to the UK market, Telsonic UK has become involved in a diverse range of industries and applications. The automotive industry is a significant part of Telsonic’s business within the UK. The company’s established reputation for providing innovative ultrasonic welding equipment and modules, means that manufacturers with challenging projects often turn to Telsonic for assistance in the development of a solution to their production problems.

A recent example of Telsonic’s philosophy of application evaluation and customer collaboration involved the development of a twin head ultrasonic welding system for a UK manufacturer of airbags. Airbags are complicated assemblies which require special attention during handling between production processes. These assemblies generally consist of the bag itself (usually made of nylon), inflator modules, sensors, electrical connectors, attachment or mounting plates and the front cover. It is essential therefore, that each step in the assembly process meets the required specifications and can also be validated to guarantee successful and safe operation of the unit.

This particular project required a rigid nylon “bridle plate” to be joined to the “throat” of the airbag. At the outset of the project Telsonic used a single point hand held ultrasonic unit to perform a series of trials which were used to determine the optimum weld positions, the most appropriate welding parameters and confirm process capability. Having agreed the welding specification with the customer Telsonic then designed and built the first of a series of planned production machines for this application.

The machine comprises of twin Telsonic USP2000 ultrasonic welding systems which are mounted to a compact and portable steel fabricated machine base. Each of the welding systems incorporates a “mother / daughter” sonotrode arrangement with 5 separate “daughter” sonotrodes. These units work together to perform the 10 spot welding operations required on each part. A component location fixture, mounted to a slide unit, and protected by light guards, allows the operator to load and present the individual components for welding. A series of sensors are used to detect the presence, position and correct order of assembly of the individual parts within the nest before the ultrasonic welding operation tales place, ensuring that only correctly configured components are produced.

As a safety critical component, it is essential that the process used to join the parts is repeatable and measurable and ultrasonics is ideally suited to demanding applications of this type. Individual parameters can be monitored during the welding cycle, checked against the pre-set limits and recorded if required, for each and every component produced within the machine. Further benefits of the ultrasonic process are cleanliness and speed of operation, this application requiring only 4.0 seconds to complete the welding cycle. The overwhelming success of the first machine, when introduced to production, has been swiftly followed by the delivery of the second machine of the series to the customer’s production facility in Romania.

This application clearly demonstrates the benefits which can be obtained from Telsonic’s philosophy of working closely with their customers, to define the most appropriate hardware, process parameters and machine concept for the task in hand.

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