Japan's Shimadzu Corporation Automates Coating Process for Medical System Components

Recently, Shimane Shimadzu, the manufacturing subsidiary of Japan's Shimadzu Corporation in Shimane Prefecture, held an opening ceremony for a new building.

The new building incorporates various manufacturing digital transformation measures, including automated coating processes for medical system components. Automation of the coating process will increase Shimadzu Corporation's coating production capacity by 50%.

Shimane Shimadzu is the manufacturing subsidiary of X-ray systems developed by the Medical Systems Division of Shimadzu Corporation. With the new building, Shimadzu Corporation is now able to coat a large number of parts for general radiography systems, fluoroscopy systems, mobile X-ray systems and other X-ray products on one production line.

In addition to the process embodied in transferring parts between coating process steps and loading them into automated coating equipment, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags will be used to assign different manufacturing instructions to each part, and artificial intelligence will be used to automatically detect errors.

Additionally, a reuse system for overspray powder coating has been introduced to eliminate the disposal of waste powder. For welding processes, robots are introduced to ensure stable quality, increase productivity, and reduce the burden on workers.

In the future, the coating process will introduce artificial intelligence-based quality inspection capabilities, and the remaining manual coating steps will use robotic technology to achieve full automation of part manufacturing.