“Automation in gear manufacturing is quite easy,” Mundt said, “but it has to be fast.” In gear cutting for automotive powertrain, Liebherr’s machines use integrated automation with very fast ring or swivel loaders that can handle gear components weighing up to 800 kg from a handshake point outside of the machine directly on the fixture. This enables integration of various automation systems without influenc- ing the machine. “Everyone thinks robotics is more flexible,” Mundt said. For some applications, however, he contends robots aren’t as flexible as conventional automa- tion. “Definitely there are some limitations.”
A Fastems system manufactures large flange valves for a customer in the petrochemical industry.
With bigger parts and single or small-part batch manufacturing, a different auto-
mation method is necessary, Mundt said. “In this field, up to 50% of the processing time of the machine gets lost by setting up the part directly on the machine. Here the setup process of the parts needs to be decoupled from the machining process,” he said. Pallet-handling systems with independent setup can lower labor costs by getting up to 90% machine usage on expensive machine tools, Mundt said, and Liebherr employs a similar recipe to booth the efficiency of its own gear-cutting operations.
Boosting Spindle Utilization
For manufacturing processes that require very high spindle utilization, conven- tional palletized automation often can deliver parts quicker to machine tools than robots. Automation developer Fastems LLC (West Chester, OH), a subsidiary of Fastems Oy Ab (Tampere, Finland), offers manufacturers its Flexible Manufactur- ing System (FMS), a container-based pallet system that is considered a progressive alternative to older pallet-pool technology.
At IMTS 2012, Fastems showed its new FPC-3000 that provides a complete FMS installed in a pallet container. Fastems’ latest entry-level FMS solution, the sys- tem was demonstrated at IMTS with Kitamura’s new HX800iL horizontal machining center to show visitors a complete FPC and machining center in action.
August 2013 |
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Photo courtesy Fastems LLC
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