Motionwell Automation designs and builds custom automation solutions in Singapore, and this page exists for the enquiry that arrives before anyone knows what to ask for. The delivered range is wide enough to make the point: a 5-axis CNC shot peening machine running X, Y, Z, B and C simultaneously over turbine blades at 0.3 to 0.6 MPa; a steel single-beam linear gantry with 10 to 30 m of X-axis travel servicing more than ten CNC machines in parallel; a precision filling and sealing platform holding plus or minus 1% volumetric accuracy across a 0.1 to 50 mL fill range; and custom jigs, fixtures, gauges and alignment tools that are not machines at all. Machines are designed, assembled and tested at our Woodlands Link facility, and the company has delivered more than 150 special purpose machines since 2014 under ISO 9001:2015 and bizSAFE Level 3.
Where we stand, said plainly before you read further. This page is a routing page, so it is short on specifics on purpose and every family of work is described properly somewhere else. We do not build production welding cells, we are not a notified body and we do not issue CE certificates, and where a proven catalogue machine covers your application at a lower price than anything we would build, the useful answer is to say so, which costs you a conversation rather than a commitment.
The fastest self-diagnosis is one sentence. Name the thing that has to change, in a unit somebody already measures: units per hour, escapes per million, minutes per changeover, hours of unattended running, or dollars of giveaway. If that sentence exists, the rest of this page will point you at the right family of work in one click. If it does not exist yet, the first section is the one to read, because a machine is not always the answer and a fixture sometimes is. The full index of what we build is the capabilities hub; this page is the narrative route into it. If you already have a part drawing and a rate target, skip ahead and talk to an engineer.
Is This Actually an Automation Problem?
Sometimes not, and the cheaper answers deserve a hearing before a machine does.
Start by separating the symptom from the constraint. A station that people complain about is not necessarily the station that limits the plant, and lifting a station that is not the bottleneck converts capital into inventory. The arithmetic for that, along with the benefit terms that usually matter more than the labour line, is on our automation ROI page, and the money argument is not repeated here.
What is worth setting out here is the set of answers that are not machines.
A fixture or a jig, where the problem is variation rather than throughput. If parts are being scrapped because an operator holds them differently on a Friday afternoon than on a Tuesday morning, the defect is in how the part is located, and locating it properly is a workholding job. The discipline is real engineering rather than a bracket: jig contact surfaces on the 12-station rotary assembly machine are machined to plus or minus 0.02 mm, because every micron of slop in a nest is spent before any sensor gets a chance to read the part. We machine custom jigs, fixtures, gauges, pallets and alignment tools alongside the machines we build, and the first medical work this company took in 2015 was exactly that, customised fixtures and inspection tooling rather than automation.
A change to the product or the process, where the machine would be paid to absorb a decision nobody made. Two versions of it are worth naming. A pack whose printed code position ends up under a shrink band, a tamper seal or a cap skirt is not a coding machine problem; walking the pack through every downstream station with a marker pen on the intended code position settles it before anyone orders equipment. And a product design that is still moving is a reason to wait rather than a reason to specify, because a geometry change after detail engineering has begun changes the machine.
A control system retrofit, where the mechanics are sound and only the controls are obsolete. This is our largest line of work this year, and our Allen-Bradley spend for it grew roughly fourfold in a single year. The decision between that and a new build is worked through on the retrofit versus replace page and the scope itself on the machine retrofit and modernisation page.
A catalogue machine, or a semi-automatic station that leaves handling to an operator. On drum and pail filling, a semi-automatic weigh-fill station gives you the same dosing controller, the same nozzle and the same accuracy as a full line and leaves container handling to an operator with a pallet truck, because container handling is the expensive half. The thresholds that close the catalogue option, and the ones that do not, are set out on our custom machine versus standard equipment page.
None of those four is a consolation prize. Each is a smaller commitment that solves the stated problem, and each is worth pricing before a machine is drawn.
Which of the Four Shapes Does Your Enquiry Take?
Where the answer is a machine, four problem shapes are worth telling apart, because each one routes to a different family of work and each one is scoped against a different number.
A manual station that cannot keep up. The stated problem is rate, and the number is sustained units per hour rather than a peak. Cases stacked by hand onto pallets, machine tools loaded and unloaded between cuts and samples walked between instruments in a laboratory all sit here. What gets built is a handling cell sized from your case list or machine list, and the sizing is arithmetic rather than preference. The delivered column palletizing platform places cartons to plus or minus 1 mm at 6 to 10 cartons per minute; the linear gantry series serves a row of machine tools from one beam; a compound autonomous mobile robot and collaborative arm move samples between racks and instruments in a QA laboratory while technicians work in the same room.
A quality escape that inspection cannot catch. The stated problem is a defect that reaches a customer, and the number is escapes rather than throughput. The defining feature of this shape is that the defect is invisible at the point it is created. An under-torqued closure looks identical to a correct one and leaks three weeks later in somebody else’s warehouse; an under-tightened fastener looks fine and loosens in service. Adding an inspection step downstream rarely addresses it, because by then the defect is already inside the product. What does address it is instrumenting the process that creates the defect, so that the machine records what actually happened: torque programmable from 0.5 to 5.0 Nm with the curve logged for every container, fastener torque from 0.1 to 2.0 Nm with final torque and total rotation angle recorded against the panel serial number, a full force-displacement curve captured at every press-fit station. Vision then judges what is visible, and the boundary between the two is the design question.
A process nobody sells a machine for. The stated problem is that the sequence exists in your process sheet and in nobody’s brochure. There is no installed base to buy from, so the enquiry starts at feasibility rather than at selection. Delivered examples sit at the awkward end of that: a battery module dismantling line where the workpiece cannot be switched off, with modules of 30 to 80 kg and a pack carrying 400 V and above; force-controlled robotic grinding of CFRP composite panels holding 100 N constant contact force through the tool path, developed with A*STAR SIMTech on the Aerospace Open Innovation Challenge 2024; a nacelle paint-removal robot working from colour-vision feedback. This shape needs a proving trial in the schedule rather than only a design phase, and the trial is what turns an opinion about feasibility into a number.
A line that has to change faster than it can. The stated problem is mix, and the number is minutes per changeover multiplied by changeovers per week. A machine optimised for one part number is the wrong machine here, and buying a faster one makes the problem worse. On the cleanroom automated test equipment series, a dedicated gantry would have been faster per cycle and was still the wrong answer, because mixed connector types with modest volume per variant meant the loading device had to be reprogrammable rather than quick, so a collaborative arm holding plus or minus 0.05 mm at the fixture interface was specified instead. What gets given up is peak throughput on any single high-volume part number, which is the trade this shape makes.
| The shape | What it sounds like | What usually gets built | Where it is described in full |
|---|---|---|---|
| A manual station that cannot keep up | “We cannot hire enough people to stack these” | A handling cell, a palletizer, a tending gantry or a robot on a track | Palletizing systems, machine tending automation, robot integration services |
| A quality escape inspection cannot catch | “It passes here and fails at the customer” | An instrumented process station that records what it did, with vision judging what is visible | Machine vision inspection, inline dimensional measurement, surface defect inspection |
| A process nobody sells a machine for | “We asked four suppliers and none of them do this” | A special purpose machine, usually preceded by a proving trial | Custom machine versus standard equipment, special purpose machine design |
| A line that has to change faster than it can | “We lose two days a week to format changes” | Format parts, recipe-driven changeover, or a reprogrammable cell instead of a faster one | Filling line changeover, collaborative robot applications |
These are not exclusive, and the pairing worth testing for is a rate problem that is really a changeover problem. The two lead to different machines, so establish which one you have before a cell is sized.
What Do We Need Before a Number Can Exist?
Six items, and none of them is a budget. A quotation is an engineering answer to a stated requirement, so the requirement has to exist first.
| What to send | What it decides | What happens without it |
|---|---|---|
| A drawing or a physical sample, with the feature that has to be held | The gripper, the nest, the fixture and the tolerance stack | The mechanism cannot be chosen, so any number is a guess |
| Sustained units per hour, and shifts per day | Station count, cycle time budget, and whether one unit covers the job | A peak figure sizes a machine you will pay for and not use |
| The space, with floor area, clear height and what is already overhead | Whether the layout is possible at all, and which kinematics survive | Cranes, ducting and sprinklers become a redesign after the concept is approved |
| The interface to your existing line: conveyor height, controller make and vintage, and the signals to be exchanged | The control architecture and the boundary of the scope | The interface becomes the project, discovered during commissioning |
| Whether every unit has to be provable afterwards, and to which rule | Record architecture, access control and validation scope | Logging depth cannot be added cheaply to a machine that was not built for it |
| The variants you actually run, plus the one genuinely on the roadmap | Change parts, recipe structure and how much flexibility to build | You either pay for flexibility you never use, or rebuild for the variant nobody mentioned |
One item sits outside that list and outside the schedule. Where an inspection station is involved, the sample set decides the project, and sample collection sits outside the build schedule, which is why it should start at the enquiry rather than at the purchase order. How to turn all of this into a document a builder can quote against line by line, and what makes competing quotations comparable, is on our guide to writing an automation URS.
How Is the Work Staged From Concept to Commissioning?
Four phases, each ending in something you approve rather than something you are shown.
| Phase | Duration | What it produces | What you are approving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Concept design | 2 to 4 weeks | Process flow, station layout, cycle time analysis with the bottleneck identified, preliminary component list, risk register and a budget range | That the machine described is the machine you want |
| Detail engineering | 4 to 6 weeks | Full 3D mechanical design, electrical schematics, pneumatic layouts, control architecture and the bill of materials | The specification every component is then bought against |
| Fabrication and assembly | 6 to 8 weeks | Machined parts to our drawings, standard components procured, machine assembled, wired and programmed | Progress against a documented build procedure with quality checkpoints |
| Testing and commissioning | 2 to 4 weeks | Factory acceptance testing at Woodlands Link, then installation, site acceptance testing on real production material, training and the documentation pack | That the machine holds the agreed cycle time, accuracy and repeatability on your parts |
Lead time runs 16 to 24 weeks from concept approval to factory acceptance testing on a standard build, and 24 to 32 weeks where cleanroom compatibility or full validation documentation applies. Design, fabrication, assembly and testing happen at Woodlands Link with an in-house design team of eight, which is why a Singapore buyer attends the factory acceptance test in an afternoon instead of flying to it, and why an adjustment found on your own parts happens in hours rather than in a shipping cycle. What that is worth against an imported machine, in landed cost and in response time, is worked through on our local versus overseas machine builder page; the phase-by-phase detail is in the special purpose machine design guide.
Who Owns What Between Us and You?
Nothing in the split below is unusual. What causes trouble is leaving a row unassigned, so this is the version we agree in writing before design starts.
| Item | Ours | Yours |
|---|---|---|
| The requirement | Challenging every line for testability before design starts | Writing it and approving it; you own the process, the product, the site and the rate |
| The mechanism | Choosing it, designing it and standing behind it | Saying what it has to achieve, not how it should be built |
| The cycle time on your parts | Measuring it and owning the number | Supplying parts representative of what actually runs |
| Part presentation upstream of the machine | Designing the feeding, nests and fixtures inside our scope | Confirming how parts arrive today, including the bad days |
| Consumables and their specification | Building the station to hold the window | The closure, liner, media or adhesive specification, from your supplier |
| Signals across the boundary | The cell control system and its handshakes | Naming the owner of each signal before either side builds |
| Safety design | Risk assessment input, safety functions, guarding, and the performance level calculated and validated rather than asserted under ISO 13849-1 | Accepting residual risk as the occupier, and the duties that come with operating the machine |
| Regulated qualification | IQ and OQ protocols prepared, PQ supported | PQ executed with your quality unit, which approves the protocols |
| Year seven | Documentation, schematics, program archive and spares support | The maintenance team and the platform they already stock spares for |
The last row decides more than it looks. A custom machine assumes somebody on site reads schematics and holds spares, and where no such team exists and none is planned, a supported catalogue product is the more honest choice regardless of how well a custom build would fit. It is also why the control platform can be your decision rather than ours: the right PLC is frequently the one your technicians already know.
Where Is Each Family of Work Described in Detail?
Organised by what the machine has to do, because that is the axis the decision actually turns on.
Move it. Handling, palletizing, machine tending and the structures that carry a robot further than its own reach. Start at robot integration services for the cell around a bought arm, palletizing systems for end of line, machine tending automation for loading production machines, and linear gantry and truss robots for the beam itself. The tooling that touches your product, and the usual reason a cell makes rate or does not, is on the end of arm tooling page.
Fill it and close it. Liquid filling splits by container size, so filling machines covers bottles, vials and trays while drum and pail filling covers the bulk end. Downstream of dosing sit capping and sealing, labelling and coding and case packing and wrapping.
Join it. Assembly work, where the first architectural decision is the transport rather than the stations, set out on rotary indexing versus inline assembly.
Prove it. Measurement and inspection as stations inside the line rather than reports afterwards: inline dimensional measurement for a number on every part, surface defect inspection for appearance, machine vision inspection for the reject decision, automated test equipment for the machine around a measurement, and laboratory automation where the instruments are the process.
Modernise it. Where the frame stays and the controls change: machine retrofit and modernisation, PLC migration and upgrade, servo drive retrofit, and legacy machine connectivity when a machine that ran isolated for fifteen years acquires a network port.
Make it provable. Regulated production adds a documentation project alongside the build: machine safety and CE marking, computer system validation, 21 CFR Part 11 and electronic batch records, and pharmaceutical serialization.
The same engineering behaves differently depending on what a defect costs and which regulator is watching, which is what the industries section is for, from medical devices and pharmaceutical packaging through electronics and semiconductor to warehouse and intralogistics. Delivered builds with their constraints and their compromises are in the case studies, and the questions worth putting to any builder, including us, are in our guide to choosing a system integrator.
Which Page Should You Open Next?
One click, based on the sentence you would use to describe the problem today.
| If this is your situation | Open this next | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You are not yet sure a machine is the right purchase | Automation ROI calculation | It contains the cases where the numbers say do not automate |
| A catalogue machine might already cover it | Custom machine versus standard equipment | It names the conditions that close the catalogue option, and the ones that do not |
| The mechanics are sound and the controls are obsolete | Retrofit versus replace | Age settles none of it; four specific questions settle most of it |
| You need to write a specification suppliers can quote against | Writing an automation URS | It turns differently shaped proposals into one comparable table |
| You are comparing a Singapore builder against an import | Local versus overseas machine builder | Landed cost, acceptance testing, spares and response time |
| You want the full index rather than a narrative | Capabilities hub | Delivered specifications by equipment class |
| You want to know how a custom build is actually run | Special purpose machine design | Phase by phase, with what each one produces |
| You want one supplier accountable for the whole scope | Turnkey automation explained | What single-source delivery includes and where it costs more |
If two rows apply, the enquiry probably contains two projects, and separating them is usually cheaper than specifying one machine to do both.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the smallest project you will take on?
Smaller than a machine. The work here runs from custom jigs, fixtures, gauges, pallets and alignment tools through single stations to complete lines, and the first medical projects this company took in 2015 were customised fixtures and inspection tooling rather than machines. A single station that fills one gap in a line you already run is usually the cheapest place to start, and control system modernisation of an existing machine, meaning new PLC, drives and HMI on mechanics that are still sound, is our largest line of work this year. Where a jig or a single station closes the gap, that is what gets quoted.
Can we give you part of the scope and keep the rest?
Yes, and most retrofit work is exactly that. The condition is that every boundary has a named owner before either side builds anything. On the delivered palletizing cell the cell PLC owns the handshakes with the line, meaning part ready, cell ready, buffer full, fault and reject asserted, and each of those signals is agreed in writing rather than assumed. Split scopes fail at interfaces rather than at machines, and an unowned signal surfaces on your floor during commissioning instead of in anyone's factory. Tell us at enquiry which parts are already bought or already committed elsewhere, because that changes the design and not only the price.
How firm is the budget figure we get at concept stage?
It is a rough order of magnitude range rather than a price, and the detailed quotation follows concept design review rather than preceding it. Two things move it afterwards: what the concept review itself changes, and what the requirement list turns out to contain once every line on it has to be testable. Concept approval is also the cheapest place to change your mind, because a change made there costs hours and the same change made once detail engineering has started costs weeks. That asymmetry is the reason we would rather spend an extra fortnight on a concept than build the wrong machine on schedule.