46 n SENSORS AND ENCODER July/August 2026 www.drivesncontrols.com Smart profile sensor solves space problem for Swiss electroplater Collini is a Swiss company that specialises in surface coatings. On the electroplating floor of its site near Zurich, space is at a premium. Boxes containing small metal parts are stacked to the ceiling in a narrow area resulting in barely enough space to manoeuvre pallets between the wall and tanks of electroplating fluids. Behind this, there are rows of tightly packed electroplating tanks. That is why Collini decided to look for a space-saving way of hanging small parts on racks for its electroplating bath, quickly and reliably. The conventional technique of loading racks by hand needs a lot of space and human resources, because several racks have to be loaded at the same time. “For that reason, we wanted to switch to a new coating system with automated loading,” explains Collini’s head of product engineering, Marco Fuchs. Since a system of this type did not exist at the time, he started to look for a company that would take on the challenge. Fuchs found a partner in the Swiss automation company Roth Technik, which specialises in smart, bespoke automation systems. The two companies worked together to develop a compact, automated loading line. At the heart of the line are four robots that load parts automatically onto empty hooks on the welded racks. The biggest challenge was that no two racks are the same. The hooks are not all located in the same place on the racks, and some may be bent or missing entirely. This is not a Electroplater loading processes carried out by hand require a considerable amount of space and human resources. Using a smart profile sensor, a Swiss automation company has developed an automated system for loading plating racks that saves space, while eliminating the need for additional human resources. A robot, guided by the profile sensor, now places parts accurately on hooks on the electroplating racks, even in the hooks are bent or missing.
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