| In September 2002 Michelin, a worldwide operating tire manufacturer, ordered an automatic testing system for elastomer specimens to be used in a plant in France.
Within the system, the specimens are handled by a 6-axis robot. The specimens are stored in magazines, together with so-called identifiers. The identifier carries a barcode label that describes the kind of test to be done. After the withdrawal by the robot, the specimen's dimensions are measured and marked for the optical extensometer. Then the specimen is fed into a temperature chamber integrated into a 5 kN testing machine. Within the chamber several specimens are tempered in an intermediate magazine for an individually adjustable time, with a hysteresis and/or tensile test subsequently done.
The benefits of this system are two-fold: Result variance is significantly reduced by the automatic, higly reproducable specimen handling and, due to the high magazine capacity, ghost operation is possible for several shifts.
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