Entech Innovative Engineering once again partnered with our friends over at MC², an award-winning brand experience solutions agency, to create tradeshow demo units for Zebra Technologies. Zebra is a world leader in innovative digital solutions, hardware and software. Founded in 1969, Zebra has more than 10,000 partners across 100 countries, and specializes in connecting companies to the data they need, guiding them with clear and accurate insights and optimizing workflows, operations, and decisions.
Zebra Technologies wanted these portable demo units, a turntable unit and a conveyor unit, created to demonstrate their industrial data capture capabilities, specifically the FS40 and VS70 cameras. These cameras needed to able to verify quality standards for various manufacturers depending on different variables. It was also important for these units to be portable for travel to various tradeshows, easy to unpack and repack as well as simple to operate. The units were created through the customer’s specifications and our internal design process. We then proceeded to fabricate custom parts for each unit. The parts for each demo unit had to be machined with great precision.
The turntable unit was fabricated to show the potential of both the FS40 camera and VS70 camera. This was accomplished by creating a scaled-down version of a beverage manufacturing line. As the turntable received inputs from the AC Drive to rotate at a set RPM, the cameras would begin to run the set program, which was to do a quality check. These inspections were to determine if the correct color bottle cap was on the beverage and if each beverage had the correct barcode. As the cameras are scanning the product the tree light on the demo unit would flash green for a ‘pass’ and red for a failure.
Similarly, the conveyor unit was fabricated to show off the FS40 camera capabilities. This demo unit mimics a scaled-down version of a conveyor manufacturing line. As the motor for the conveyor belt connected to the AC Drive, it would begin to move the conveyor the camera would begin to scan the items that were on attached to the belt of the conveyor. The FS40 camera can be set to look at certain features of an item such as shape, color, etc., and depending on what it was set to it would trigger. The captured data would then show up on the screen connected to the demo unit. This screen displayed the dashboard associated with these cameras which would show pass/fails and other important data needed in manufacturing.
It was important to match the level of precision of each part to make sure that the units would assemble correctly, so the cameras could pick up all necessary data. Other challenges that were faced were learning to set up the controls in which the AC Drive, Proximity Sensor, Camera, and stack lights all needed to work in unison or communicate with one another to properly showcase the customer’s product. Entech also provided extensive operating and maintenance manuals to help increase ease-of-use, including how to easily repackage the demo units into their specified crates when they are being used in tradeshow environments where people may be unfamiliar with the units.
Ultimately, Entech Innovative successfully fabricated these intricate demo units for trade show use that will showcase Zebra’s technology and continued to prove our expertise in fabrication for experiential marketing and trade show use.