This thesis was conducted in collaboration with ESBE, a company that produces valves, actuators and other components for hydronic heating systems. The actuators are provided with cables that are customer-specific when it comes to length and type of contact. The current cable process involves several manual assembly steps which are phys-ically demanding for hands and wrists. The manual approach is due to the wide range of customer-specific cables, with varying batch sizes.

The aim of the study was to design a concept for automated cable processing that is economically realistic, that improves the ergonomic situation for the operators and increases productivity. The design should be flexible, allowing for small future changes that expand the usefulness.

The concept is a fully automated process to produce cables with one of the contacts that is used on the ESBE side of the cable that connects to the PCB. The parts that are contact-specific in the conceptual design are interchangeable, so that the concept can be expanded to handle other contacts. To automate things further the idea is that a robot makes the changes that is needed to produce a certain type of contact. The interchangeable parts are intended to be relatively simple so that it is easy to make new fixtures and add functionality, the robot is the component that stands for the complex parts of the execution. The concept involves tools and fixtures that help prevent the robot having to handle common deformations characteristics of cables.

A robot that would be able to detect deformed objects, adjust its path in real time and adapt to shape changes during handling is the optimal goal. Even though research in the area is advancing, there is still a way to go. At present, automation in cable production still requires solutions tailored to the specific demands of each production setup.