Prototype Engineering: A Production System of Its Own

A custom automation machine is a production machine engineered around one customer’s process and part, rather than pulled from a catalogue. Its stations, controls, and cycle time are set by the product it has to run. We design, build, and test each one end to end, from the first drawing to the real part running at its target cycle time.

A catalogue machine answers a question the market has already asked a thousand times. A machine that has never existed before answers a new one, and building it well takes a production system of its own. That system is what this article is about, and it is how we are set up to work.

What makes a first machine different from serial production?

Serial production is engineered for repetition. A lean production flow assumes a fixed sequence, identical cycles, and waste squeezed out over thousands of parts. That is the model behind most industrial automation, and it works precisely because the cycle is already known. A first machine has no repeating cycle yet. Engineering, build, and test run at the same time, and the flow gets designed while the machine is being built. The goal is the same in the end, a machine that runs reliably, but the production system that gets you there is a different animal.

The two systems solve two different problems.

We treat every project as a first machine, because for the customer it usually is. The engineering office, the workshop, and the test bench sit on the same floor and work the same machine at the same time. When a fixture that looked right on the screen ends up fighting the real part, the person who drew it is a few steps from the bench where it is being tried. That short distance is the whole idea.

Where does a custom machine start?

It starts from the process, and from the part. Before any mechanical design, we study how the part behaves when it is fed, oriented, clamped, and released; what the target cycle time allows; and which operations belong in which station. Get that reading wrong and no amount of good mechanics rescues the machine later. Get it right and most of the design falls into place on its own.

The trigger is almost always a process that has hit a wall. A few of the shapes it tends to take:

In every row the question underneath is the same: what should this process look like once a machine runs it, instead of a person?

What do you need to start a custom machine?

The part comes first, or a sample close enough to run at the bench. Around it we need the process as it stands today and where it hurts, the target cycle time and the volume behind it, and the criteria that separate a good part from a reject. From those four inputs the engineering study begins: how the part feeds and orients, which operations can share a station, where the cycle time is won or lost. The more honest the picture at this stage, the fewer surprises later at the bench. A rough process description and one representative part tell us more than a long specification written around a machine that does not exist yet.

How does a first-of-its-kind machine take shape?

The build runs from the customer’s brief to after-sales, through five stages that all stay under one roof:

1. Brief — the customer brings a process, a part, and a target cycle time.
2. Design — the technical office defines stations, motion, controls, and safety.
3. Workshop — frames, fixtures, and stations get machined and fitted.
4. Assembly and integration — mechanics, electronics, and software come together, often on a base such as an indexed rotary table, a pallet line, or a robot cell chosen for the cycle.
5. Testing and handover — the machine runs the real part at the real cycle time, with the customer standing next to it.

The real work happens between those lines, at the bench. The first real parts through a station rarely behave the way the CAD promised: a fixture holds a drawing perfectly and a slightly warped part not at all; an orientation that looked obvious jams once in fifty. So we run the part, watch what the machine does with it, and feed what we learn straight back into the design. By the time the customer sees the machine cycle, it has been through that loop many times over. That is why a first machine ships reliable: everything that could go wrong was found here, at our bench, before it ever left the floor.

What does the customer receive?

A machine that fits the process it was built for: the controls, the cycle time, the footprint, the way operators load and unload. And a machine that can grow with the product. When the part changes, a changeover brings new fixtures, tooling, and parameters, while the base machine stays. The investment follows the product through its revisions rather than ending with its first version.

It is also why we describe what we build by process, not by a fixed model range: assembly and tightening, folding, marking, and end-of-line control. Every one of those machines started as a first machine. This way of working is the company itself.

Who builds a machine that has never existed before?

A builder organized end to end for it. When engineering, the workshop, and the test bench all answer to the same project, a decision made at the bench reaches the drawing the same day, and the machine that ships is the exact machine that was tested, cycle for cycle. GAV Sistemi has worked this way for more than 35 years, across sectors from automotive to oil and gas. Every machine in that history began the same way: as a process one customer needed to run, and no catalogue could.

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