Robotic thermal battery pellet fabrication

Thermal battery manufacturing at the General Electric Neutron Devices Department (GEND) is a sequence of operations involving materials processing, component manufacture, and assembly. These operations, for the most part, were manually performed although some operation were computer or fixture assisted. The high labor intensity and the need for process consistency in these operations made the conversion to a robotic work cell appealing in that it could increase productivity while allowing the reassignment of highly trained workers to other duties. An Alpha robot (Microbot, Inc.) was coupled with a Hewlett-Packard HP-9816 microcomputer, and custom software was developed to control the thermal battery manufacturing process. The software provided a menu driven main program with feedback at virtually every step to allow technicians with little or no computer experience to operate the system. Previously, one or two workers were assigned to each of several industrial presses used in the manufacture of thermal batteries. With the introduction of a robotic operator and a microcomputer process control, one worker alone could support two to three presses.