Rebuild of robots in processing workshops
This new robot structure is very compact and can provide a perfect solution to meet the automation needs of the processing plant. When it is not needed or when it is not used, it can also be automatically taken out of the work site. Sequoia Automation has a CNC precision machining shop that provides secondary and tertiary components for the automotive industry. They need to reduce production costs, increase production efficiency, and maintain a competitive advantage in this industry. In order to solve the problems faced by the company, it is necessary to improve the automation level of the double-tray vertical machining center in the company's production workshop, and design and install small and exquisite robots to meet the loading and unloading requirements of a large number of workpieces on the machine tool. The company's executives have noticed that the use of robots is the key to fully exploiting the potential of the shop, which can increase the productivity of the shop by more than five times. Sequoia Automation specializes in the production of connectors for automotive air conditioning systems. Generally speaking, this type of connector is smaller and is mounted in a 2 to 2.5 inch tube. They first saw the aluminum rods produced by the extrusion process and then processed them on a vertical machining center. The processing station mainly includes the aperture and some other internal parts, and its shape usually maintains the original blank shape of the extrusion. The workshop has 34 vertical machining centers, most of which are equipped with indexing tables. Due to the long-term processing cycle, the parts in the fixture are fully loaded, so an operator can normally operate 2 vertical machining centers. Although this saves a certain amount of labor costs, the processing center's competitiveness is relatively insufficient if compared with the rotary combination machine tool operated and operated by competitors of Sequoia Automation. In order to increase the productivity of the machine tool, the shop began to replace the old machine tools with a two-tray vertical machining center. The company’s general manager, Dennis J. Burke, explained: “Now, old-fashioned machine tools are set aside and discarded. The operator removes the finished product from the fixture of the new machine tool and replaces the new blank. In standby downtime, we started replacing our old machine tools with a two-pallet machining center, so that when a piece of stock on a pallet is being processed, the operator can load and unload another part on the fixture of another pallet. We purchased 7 double-pallet vertical machining centers. On these machines, we can exchange the two pallets in a matter of seconds, which greatly reduces downtime.†The application of the two-pallet machine has made the company a step in the right direction, but there is still much work to be done further. Mr. Cheryl Schraut, the company’s director of quality control, added: “Because of the global economic problems, we must not only compete with the workshops in the same street in the region, but also compete with companies in South America, India, the United Kingdom, and worldwide. The cost of employing each machine tool is getting higher and higher. Obviously, we must find some practical ways to improve the automation level of the processing technology. The problem is that we are only a processing workshop and there is no long-term production business. The challenge is to revolutionize the automation of the process rather than relying on their own automation." How to automate? According to Mr. Burke's prediction, the use of robotics is the best solution to realize the automation revolution in their shop's machining operations, although he is not sure which type of robot is best suited to their job. Mr. Bruke studied various automation solutions and hopes to find the best solution that best fits existing machines and existing machining processes. With the constant research of a series of options, an ideal robot solution has finally surfaced. This robot must be small, lightweight, and cost-effective. It should be dedicated to a vertical machining center rather than serving several machine tools at the same time. When it is not necessary for the robot to provide services, the robot can be taken out of the work site and the operator can operate the machine in a normal working manner, that is, manually loading and unloading the workpiece. Mr. Burke then told Gary Kowalsiki, regional sales manager at Fanuc Robotics, to describe in detail his ideas for the robot he needed. Sequoia Automation first purchased two Fanuc CNC Mate 200i production robots from Yamazen Corporation, and also included two NV4G CNC double-pallet vertical CNC machining centers provided by NTC Americas, equipped with multi-functional fixtures for processing. The company's large volume orders. The Mate 200i robot designed by Fanuc has a compact structure and can be used as a low-cost machine tool solution. This device was developed as a complete set of equipment and can be directly connected to the interface of the machine tool. The complete self-contained system device includes a 6-axis robot with an arm extension of 19 inches. This robot can be installed on lathes, milling machines, machining centers and other machine tools to provide services for loading and unloading workpieces. Its loading and unloading height is 36 to 44 inches above the ground. The weight of this robot is very light (only 1050Ib) and it can be used to lift lifting equipment and install it on any machine in the factory that matches it or allows it to approach. Robot can move a few feet away The Sequoia automation company only needs the robot to move aside a few feet to bring it closer to the machine. The robot's arm is mounted on a side-to-side rolling platform that allows it to move back and forth in the loading and unloading area of ​​the machine's workpiece. The right side of the protective cover can be moved with the platform and extend to the left side of the protective cover. When the platform is fully extended to the right, the robot is directly in front of the workpiece loading area. The protective cover occupies an area of ​​3×7 ft. When it extends to the left, its area will be reduced to 3×4 ft. To move the robot away from the machine, two pins must be removed to move the robot to the left. Repositioning of the robot in front of the workpiece loading and unloading area requires the operator to push the robot back to its original position and reinstall the pin on the panel of the protective cover, and tighten the mounting block with screws to fix it on the platform. On the stand, until the stand touches the ground, the robot is ready to start working. Currently, Sequoia Automation is using its newly installed robotic device to load and unload workpieces from a two-pallet vertical machining center, which is a connection for automotive air conditioning systems. The vertical machining center adopts a juxtaposition arrangement. Each machine tool is used for both sides of parts. Processing sequence During the processing of the connector, the robot first moves from the workpiece picking station of the workpiece library to an extruded blank and conveys the blank to a multi-function workpiece holder controlled by a hydraulic drive. The fixture is installed. On a pallet that is empty on the vertical machining center. After the 12 cavities in the workpiece holder are all loaded with blanks, the blanks are accurately positioned and clamped, and then sent to the machine for processing. The protective door of the vertical machining center is opened, the position of the tray switch is positioned, and the fixture filled with the workpiece is placed in the processing area for processing. When the machine tool machines the first side of the workpiece, the robot begins to install more blank parts onto the second empty pallet clamp. After the first face of the blank has been machined, the pallet is again replaced. The robot removes the workpiece from the first pallet after machining the first side, and then transfers it to the “flip station†inside the robot guard, and then installs it from the inner panel to the workstation and passes through this workstation. Turn the work piece upside down so that the unmachined side faces up and clamp it again on the fixture. After the 12 parts machined on the first side are chucked again to the fixture, the pallet changes position again, and then the second side of the workpiece is processed. The parts on the tray are now fully machined, but the tray needs to be repositioned so that the robot can remove the part from the tray. However, before the robot removes the machined parts, the high-speed compressed air nozzle installed on the base of the robot clamp blows away the chips left on the entire jig because there may be some chips during the process of removing the parts. Dropping into one or more cavities affects the correct seating of the next batch of workpieces. It takes approximately 30 minutes for the first part to be machined from the installation of the blank to the part to complete the entire process until the finished product is delivered to the next area. Impact assessment These two robots are the first technical experience experienced by Sequoia Automation. The company knows that this is just the beginning of robotic applications. In the years to come, there are still many things to learn. In this process, they have made many improvements to the robot, including the following: Greatly improved the machine's uptime. After two of the company's latest dual-pallet machining centers use robots to load and unload workpieces, fewer and fewer machines shut down due to the loading and unloading of workpieces. The robot has never caused any obstacles to the machining center. In addition to the short pauses during the pallet exchange, the tool is always in the cutting state (of course it takes a little time to change the tool, but it is very short and relatively negligible.) Mr. Burke admits: “Using a two-pallet machining center generally saves more uptime than a machine with a common table, even if the operator manually loads or unloads the workpiece. However, some chores often The operator's attention will be distracted, such as looking for gauges, tool breaks and finding replacement tools, short breaks at lunch, etc., so that the machine tool is often idle and the machine's uptime rarely exceeds 75%. On the other hand, robots can work there all the time, can install new rough parts and remove already processed parts, which may increase the machine uptime to 95%. The machine's uptime can be increased by 20% compared to the workpiece's machine tool." Increased production efficiency. After the new vertical machining center adopting robot services, in addition to the normal improvement of the normal operating time, the production efficiency of Sequoia Automation has also begun to improve significantly. According to historical practice, each machine tool in the processing plant is equipped with an operator. In order to reduce the increasing labor costs, the company found a way for operators to manage two machine tools. When the latest machine tools for robot services were installed in the workshop, they found that one operator could provide service for two machine tools while also taking into consideration the double-tray vertical machining center that required manual loading and unloading of workpieces. This is mainly due to the fact that there are enough blanks stored in the robot warehouse, so that the vertical machining center can be operated for 4 hours without human beings. In order to explore the way robots can feed vertical machining centers over a long period of time, the workshop began to implement a two-shift work program at the two vertical machining centers served by robots. Between the two shifts, 4 hours were unmanned. operation. This arrangement requires only two shift operators, but it can complete the equivalent of three shifts of production. Increased production stability. Cheryl Schraut from Sequoia Automation stated: "The advantage of using robots is that once the application is handy, the same thing can be done at any time. When you remove the changes in the process, you can improve your performance. When we apply the robot to the new When the machine tool's workpiece is installed, its work efficiency index can be increased from 1.3 to 1.9, which is truly a remarkable improvement. The higher the index, the better the process performance." Mr. Schraut continued: “When you clear the variability of a field, you can improve in other areas. For example, the manual installation of parts in the fixture has always been the root cause of the problem. Once the operator misplaced a part, This may result in a broken tool, but now robots are used to mount the part in the hydraulic fixture so that the problem will never occur again. Our tools will no longer be broken due to operator misoperation. The cost of our tool's wear is mainly due to the breakage of the tool, not the wear of the tool.Now, the service life of the tool can be extended to several months, and it is easier to predict.After loading and unloading the workpiece by a robot, it also reduces the operation. Human hazards, because this hazard can also lead to damage to the machining center.For example, if the operator forgets to tighten a nut value of 0.1 yuan, it may cause the spindle of the machine tool to be damaged. With the robot, we can save us $15,000. Then spend the money to replace the spindle." Make up for the lack of skilled workers caused by deficiencies. Mr. Burke added: “Finding a few employees who operate robots is easier than finding a worker who is busy loading and unloading workpieces on the machine all day. Skilled workers are in great demand, but it is difficult to find professional people. And we are employees. The work provided can use the most advanced technologies, such as CNC machine tools, computers, SPCs, and now robots. We can give 'thinking' work to potential and promising employees to complete; and 'no thinking Sexuality and monotonous work are difficult to sell outside." Add more equipment one after another Mr. Burke reported that Sequoia Automation plans to add another 1 or 2 robots this year to install in other vertical machining centers in the workshop. He is convinced that the combination of a vertical machining center and robots with loadable parts can make the workshop's medium-volume production (400,000 to 750,000 pieces) more competitive; and the use of rotary combination machines and similar equipment in the processing plant Suitable for production of high-volume parts (over 1,000,000 pieces). In addition, the vertical machining center can choose to leave the robot aside and use manual loading and unloading operations. Mr. Burke explained: "We don't want our customers to pay more for the fact that we can only process in one way. Using our existing approach, I can remove the automation system as much as I want and keep the manual work. †The new robots in the workshop will look different from those currently installed in the workshop. The original protective cover was made of Plexiglas and its frame was made of extruded aluminum alloy. However, in the new protective cover, it will be replaced by a more common metal plate and a smaller resin glass window. Mr. Burke made a suggestion on the idea of ​​robotic automation in the workshop. He emphasized: “From the very beginning, our automation goal was to provide better tools for employees and increase productivity. It was people who created the company, not the equipment. When you started planning to install robots, some employees might worry about it. And to lose their job, you must stress to employees that the company is increasing its investment in automation to better serve its customers and meet their needs, and they need to be assured that they are installing robots so that they can work better. And in the long-term interest, robots can help them not lose their jobs." Soft PVC film can be divided into normal clear PVC film and super clear PVC film. The thickness of flexible PVC film is from 0.08-5mm. 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According to some skilled operators in the workshop, they can look after up to six vertical machining centers that are serviced by robots. This is not the case for night shifts, because only two-pallet vertical machining centers use robots to load and unload workpieces, while Sequoia Automation's most vertical machining centers use common workbenches. Of course, as time goes by, the shop can gradually add more robots and double-pallet vertical machining centers to reach its required level of automation and maintain its competitive position.