a 40-employee precision plastics operation in Switzerland
How a Swiss PCB Overmolding Line Reached 5,000 Units Daily Above 95% Uptime
A 40-person precision plastics shop in Switzerland automated PCB overmolding with two robots, seven QA stations, and blister packing while holding 5,000 units per day.
- 5,000
- Units per day
- >95%
- Line availability
- 7
- QA test stations
- 2
- Robot cells
Based on a documented real-world deployment. Figures are from public reporting; the organization is not named.
Automotive quality on Swiss wages
A 40-employee precision plastics operation in Switzerland needed to keep high-precision insert and overmolding work at home instead of chasing low-wage offshore quotes. Automotive buyers expected zero-defect PCB assemblies that regulate motor temperature once installed.
Manual insert loading, molding, inspection, and blister packing could not hold cycle time and traceability when every irregularity was unacceptable. The plant had to tie molding, seven distinct quality checks, and final packaging into one repeatable loop with minimal human touches.
Two robots on one overmolding line
An approved system integrator built a line around a large six-axis arm with a multifunction gripper that loads PCB inserts, removes molded parts, and packs finished units into blisters without gripper changes. A second compact six-axis arm loads an integrated quality station and visits seven test positions for different inspections.
The larger arm's long reach let it handle downstream arrangement and packaging while the smaller arm focused on precision motion at each QA station. Encapsulated designs suited the shop floor, and operator training covered programming and maintenance after go live.
- Load inserts and demold parts with one multifunction gripper
- Route each part through seven dedicated QA test positions
- Pack tested assemblies into blisters on the same line
- Keep human intervention limited to exceptions and oversight
Documented production outcomes
Published results report plant availability still above the required 95 percent mark while output of 5,000 units per day and strict quality targets were comfortably achieved. The complete system functions with minimal human intervention on the PCB overmolding task.
Repeatability on the large arm is cited at plus or minus 0.06 millimeters with roughly 2.2 meters of reach for insert, demold, and pack steps. The compact inspection arm must catch every irregularity because end users expect zero error on shipped blisters.
What US electronics plants can take from it
High-mix insert molding with inline inspection is exactly where cobot rental for manufacturing and end of line automation pay off when labor cost is the argument against domestic build.
Service Robot Co. did not deploy this Swiss line. We are a vendor neutral integrator for US businesses that need inspection robot rental paths, machine tending robot cells, phased deployment with no shutdown, and nationwide service on one contract. Robot leasing for business and commercial robot demo pilots can mirror a single-station proof before you scale fleet wide.