Shoe Manufacturing

First, the containers are fed onto accumulation roller conveyors. Clamping devices position the containers precisely for the retrieval robot. Empty containers are automatically transported further and clamped again so they can be refilled with finished parts later.

A feeding robot removes five pairs of insoles at a time from a container. The gripper spreads the pairs from a narrow center-to-center distance to a wider one and transfers them to a folding and placement station. There, the distances are increased once more before the pairs are unfolded and reliably placed on a conveyor belt.

The insoles are fed to two assembly robots via a servo-motor-driven conveyor belt. Their position is detected by a 2D camera system. 3D scanners then capture the exact position for subsequent punching. The robots place the parts on a rotary turret, align them according to the measurement data, and clamp them in place for further processing.

On the rotary indexing machine, Station 1 processes the right footbed and Station 2 the left—both simultaneously. In the next station, the required hole patterns are punched using guided punching tools; the punch scrap is directed into designated containers in a controlled manner. The movements are driven by servo motors.

Next, leather toe bars are installed. They are supplied from a magazine and separated using a vacuum drum. An assembly plier picks up the bars and inserts them precisely within a tolerance range of ±1 mm. A manual magazine change is provided for.

Next, plastic tabs are installed. These are fed into the system by type via two feeding systems and are aligned by a robot and placed into feed rails. A servomotor-driven handling system automatically positions the struts beneath the indexing turret. From there, they are picked up by passing gripping tongs, pulled through the footbeds, and rotated 90° in the process.

An infrared heater is pneumatically moved into position to activate the adhesive on the leather tabs. The temperature is measured, and the heating power is regulated. The system then checks the temperature of the tab. If it is high enough, the tab is pneumatically folded over and pressed into place.

At the unloading station, another robot picks up the finished parts one by one from the turntable and places them on the finished-parts conveyor belt. A separate multi-gripper then picks up five pairs of finished footbeds from the conveyor belt at the same time, groups them together, and places them, sorted, back into an empty container.

The filled containers are automatically transported via accumulation roller conveyors to the pickup and dispensing station, which completes the assembly process.