ABB WISA Technology

No mat­ter what man­u­fac­tur­ers do to pro­tect their cables on robot­ic sys­tems, even­tu­al­ly there will be wear and tear on the cables, and they will have to be replaced – some more rapid­ly than oth­ers. So, ABB cre­at­ed Wire­less Inter­face for Sen­sors and Actu­a­tors (WISA) tech­nol­o­gy to cut down on some of the break­age of cables.

So, what is WISA tech­nol­o­gy by ABB? As men­tioned above, it is the wire­less trans­mis­sion of data from sen­sors to actu­a­tors with­out the use of cables that can break and cause inter­rup­tions in the flow of the pro­duc­tion line. By using WISA by ABB, man­u­fac­tur­ers vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nate these types of interruptions.

One com­pa­ny that has put this tech­nol­o­gy into prac­tice is an auto­mo­tive head­lamps man­u­fac­tur­er, Hel­la, a com­pa­ny that pro­duces head­lamps for cus­tomers like Audi, BMW, Chrysler and GM. Before the use of ABB’s WISA tech­nol­o­gy, Hel­la was hav­ing at least one sig­nal cable break every week or so, which real­ly slowed down their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Accord­ing to ABB, despite care­ful instal­la­tion of the cables, the rapid move­ment of the head­lamps work­cell often led to dam­aged cables.

By switch­ing to wire­less sig­nal trans­fer with WISA, the com­pa­ny was able to bypass this issue with pro­duc­tion inter­rup­tions all togeth­er. Instead of hav­ing sig­nal cables that trans­fer infor­ma­tion from one point to anoth­er, it is all done wire­less­ly, so there are no cables to snap under the rapid move­ments of their work­cell. The WISA tech­nol­o­gy from ABB was easy for the com­pa­ny to install, and it paid for itself with­in the first few months through giv­ing the com­pa­ny inter­rup­tion-free production.

All in all, Hel­la real­ized that ABB’s WISA tech­nol­o­gy sys­tem was essen­tial to the future of their pro­duc­tion and invest­ed wise­ly in a tech­nol­o­gy that eas­i­ly cov­ered their return on invest­ment, by short­en­ing pro­duc­tion time need­ed to pro­duce headlamps.

Fea­tures like WISA by ABB are impor­tant fac­tors when design­ing a work cell for your fac­to­ry pro­duc­tion line. It’s a good thing that com­pa­nies like Robots​.com, a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for ABB Robot­ics, are around to give you all the infor­ma­tion you need for a seam­less inte­gra­tion with a great sys­tem. When you call Robots​.com, you get friend­ly ser­vice and access to the entire ABB cat­a­log, includ­ing fea­tures like WISA.

If your com­pa­ny is inter­est­ed in inte­grat­ing an automa­tion sys­tem with Robots​.com, call us today at 877−762−6881 or con­tact rep­re­sen­ta­tives online.