Cabin air spring manufacturing line

A cabin air spring is the rubber-and-cord spring that carries the suspended cab of a truck. It is built up in layers on a mandrel, cured under heat and pressure, and then stripped off — five separate operations that, done conventionally, mean five machines, five operators and five chances for a part to be handled wrong between them.

This line puts all five inside one cell. Rubber sheet is cut to length, the cord fabric is prepared, the layers are wound onto the mandrel, the wound mandrel is vulcanized, and the finished air spring is stripped. A six-axis robot moves the part between the stations, so the sequence is fixed by the program rather than by whoever is on shift.

Two things make it a production line rather than a group of machines. The winding angle is checked by camera before the part is allowed forward, because an air spring wound at the wrong angle fails in service and cannot be detected afterwards by looking at it. And four vulcanization molds sit in the cell, so four product diameters run on the same line without a mechanical changeover. One operator runs the whole cell.