Automated equipment, designed around your process. DeWys Engineering provides custom automated machine design for manufacturers and machine builders across West Michigan and North America, including robotic cells, assembly machines, material handling systems, test stands and safety guarding.
We handle the mechanical design from first concept through a complete build package of 3D models, 2D prints and bills of materials. We stay involved through the build and runoff. When you need a builder or a controls integrator, we bring in partners we have worked with for years.
Three Ways We Design Machines With You
Machine Designers for Your Maintenance Team
Many of our customers have capable maintenance departments that build a lot of their own equipment. What they lack is a machine designer. We fill that role, designing the fixtures, stands, conveyors and simpler automation their team builds and wires in-house.
Design-Build Projects With Our Partners
When a project is bigger than your maintenance team can take on, we act much like a general contractor. We handle all of the engineering, from robotic cell design to guarding, bring in one of our partner machine builders to build it and one of our partner controls companies to program it, and the three of us work together through design, build and installation at your plant.
Overflow Design for Machine Builders
When your designers are booked, we take on complete machines and work as an extension of your engineering team. Our goal is to blend in so well that the only way your shop floor can tell we designed the machine is by reading the designer’s name in the title block. We work in your SolidWorks templates and PDM vault, follow your drawing standards, part numbering and BOM format, and spec the purchased components your builders and controls team already prefer. See outsourced mechanical engineering for more on how we support engineering teams.
Our Automated Machine Design Process
- Define the requirements. We sit down with you, and often your end customer, to set the scope and find the features the machine must have to fit into the process already on your floor.
- Capture what exists. If there is no CAD for the part, or the machine has to fit into an existing space, we 3D scan the part or the whole area.
- Concept design. We research options and build a 3D concept of the machine in SolidWorks, then review it with you and adjust.
- Detailed design. The concept becomes a full design, with motion studies, operator ergonomics, cycle time evaluations and meetings with purchased-part vendors. We work with your controls group from the concept stage so sensors, motors and other controls items are sized correctly and included on the prints and bill of materials.
- Release. After a final review, we release a complete build package: 3D models, 2D prints and a full bill of materials.
- Build and runoff support. We answer the builder’s questions, handle redlines, help troubleshoot during build and runoff, and update the design so your as-built prints match the machine.
Automated Machine Design Projects
Flexible Robotic Cell for Kitchen Drawer Assembly
For Quality Machine & Automation in Holland, Michigan, we designed a robotic assembly cell from the ground up for pull-out kitchen drawers that hold a trash can. Flexible fixturing handles a range of drawer widths. The operator drops the left and right drawer slides into nests on each side of the cell, and the robot picks each slide and screws it to the side of the wooden drawer box.
Robot-Tended Injection Molding With Overmold Inserts
For an automotive part molded around a set of overmolded inserts, we designed the automation for Dimoco, a Grand Rapids machine builder. The operator loads every insert into a fixture outside the robot guarding and slides it into the cell. The robot picks up all of the inserts in one move. When the press opens, one side of a dual-sided end-of-arm tool pulls the finished part, the tool rotates 180 degrees, and the other side places the new inserts in the mold. The finished part drops down a gravity chute out of the cell, where the operator removes the sprue and packs it.
Robotic Foam-in-Place Gasket Cell
For an automotive Tier 1 supplier, we designed a robotic cell, built by Quality Machine & Automation, that dispenses a foam-in-place gasket around the edge of an injection-molded part. When the part is bolted into the vehicle, the foam compresses against the body panel and creates the seal.
Material Handling for Wood Products
With JBS Machining in Grant, Michigan, as the builder, we designed conveyance for a wood products manufacturer: an L-shaped chain conveyor line that moves large bundles of lumber into processing, and a powered hold-down that keeps boards pressed flat to a conveyor as they pass under a continuous milling operation.
Produce Washing Machine
For a greenhouse grower, built by Bakker Metal Fabrication in Coopersville, we designed a machine that washes field-picked squash. A built-in hydraulic lift pushes a full gaylord down into a long, water-filled basin. The squash float out and travel past brushes and sprayers that clean off the mud, then a custom conveyor carries them out at the far end. The machine is a large weldment with a water pump at one end and the hydraulic lift at the other.
Long-Duration Adhesive Test Stand
An adhesive tape manufacturer needed to test many tape formulations at once in a shear test that can run for weeks or months. Each station hangs a sample, the tape bond and a weighted second sample. When the tape fails, the lower sample falls and stops that station’s timer. We designed the multi-station stand with an individual timer for every sample, all run from a single PLC.
Safety Guarding and Robot Cages
We design a lot of guarding. That includes robot cages and guarding packages for new cells, and retrofits for older equipment that needs to be brought up to today’s safety expectations. For retrofits, we can laser scan the entire room, then design guarding that fits the existing equipment, floor and building around it the first time.
Custom Machines and Automated Equipment We Design
- Robotic cells: assembly, machine tending, injection mold automation, adhesive and foam-in-place dispensing, vision systems
- End-of-arm tooling and fixtures: robot EOAT and grippers, weld fixtures, assembly fixtures, CNC holding fixtures, inspection fixtures and locators, loaders and unloaders
- Assembly and joining: battery pack assembly, bowl-fed assembly cells, multi-fastener applicators, automated nut runners, heat staking, sonic, hot plate and laser welding, MIG weld cells
- Presses and processing: C-frame and hydraulic presses, plastic part punches, de-gating and trimming, tube bending, flying cut-off, rotary dial systems, servo slides, tilt and nesting machines, laser part marking
- Testing and inspection: leak testers, pressure testing, test stands, automated inspection
- Material handling: conveyance for the wood and glass processing industries, part-feed conveyors, screw conveyors and augers, lift frames, powder fill and packaging stations, dunnage load assists, ergonomic assembly tables
- Surface treatment tooling: grit-blast nests, pallets and grippers, electroplating fixtures, masking fixtures
- Other: composite wet-out fixtures, custom drive mechanisms, fabric wrapping, foam-in-place molding, 3D printing post-processing equipment, and aerospace equipment
More of Our Machine Designs
Related Services
- 3D scanning & reverse engineering: capturing existing parts and assemblies as editable CAD
- Fixture & tooling design: assembly, inspection, weld and laser cutting fixtures and trim tooling
- Sheet metal & weldment design: fabrication-ready enclosures, frames and structural weldments
- 3D printed machine components: nests, grippers and end-of-arm tooling printed by our sister company, Forerunner 3D Printing
DeWys Engineering is part of Gambit Works. We’re ISO 9001:2015 certified and ITAR registered.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you build the machines you design?
No. We design them, and one of our partner machine builders or your own team builds them. If you already have a preferred builder, we work with them.
Do you do controls and PLC programming?
Not in-house. We coordinate with your controls group from the concept stage, and if you need one, we connect you with one of the controls companies we work with.
Can you design guarding for equipment we already have?
Yes. We laser scan the area, then design robot cages and guarding packages that fit the existing equipment and building.
Do you work with companies outside West Michigan?
Yes. Most of our machine design work is for manufacturers and builders in West Michigan, from Grand Rapids and Holland to Sparta and Newaygo, but we have designed equipment for customers across North America.
Start Your Machine Design Project
Tell us what the machine needs to do, what you have to start from, and when you need it running. Call 616-604-1977, email [email protected], or use our contact form.