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at two metalcasting facilities in a living lab setting. Living labs began to emerge in early 2000, and the concept has since grown. A precondition in living lab activities is that they are used in a real-world context. During this living lab process, constant feed- back for improvement was collected and transformed into a requirement list for the technology providers.


Case Study One: Flexible Robot Part Handling in an Iron Casting Facility


Preferring to remain


anonymous, the iron met- alcaster is a manufacturer of residential wood stoves. Te company faces seasonal cus- tomer demand patterns and produces eight series of wood stoves, each with four vari- ants. Two of the series have special coating processes after the individual assembly parts are cast, with special handling requirements. Te metalcaster implemented a test automa- tion cell between the cleaning and sorting processes as a potential test area for implementing a flexible automation solution for handling the varying part families. Te company wanted to test an automation cell built around the range of products that they manufacture and choose the best way to integrate it into production. Te company incorpo- rated a used robot to implement cost effective, quick changeovers for fast, flexible part routing and handling. Te overall design concept of the


material handling’s Ethernet com- munication handling system con- sisted of three subsystems: the robot manipulator, the material handling system and the vision system. In the cell, an overhead camera identified the orientation of the part lying on the conveyor belt, which was inter- nally tracked by the robot (Fig. 1). Te image captured by the camera was processed by the vision system and transferred via closed network


orientation. Two marking options were tested for this purpose: concentric circles and straight lines (Fig. 2). The straight line mark-


ers were discovered to have a reflection limitation when the tilt angle of the vision system was greater than 30 degrees for iron castings. This made the concentric circles a better option for tracking because a part of the circle was identifiable even under the light of the vision cameras (reflection issues). Handling the parts once


Fig. 2. Two marking options were tested for the vision system: concentric circles and straight lines. Both were seen fine under normal light conditions (top) but a screenshot from the vision system reveals only the circles remained visible due to reflection issues and high-angle tilting.


they arrived at the machine was also important. Imple- menting machine flexibility with the use of robots with reconfigurable grippers and intelligent interfaces (flexible workspace, vision system etc.), automatic tool changers and multi-axis robots helped to enhance material handling flexibility at the most affordable price. Figures 3 and 4 show two gripper prototypes used


connection to the robot. Te robot gripper then moved the electromag- nets accordingly to pick up the part.


Vision System Challenge: Picking from Conveyor vs. Bin


Te vision module was to perform


object recognition of a three-dimen- sional part and locate the coordi- nates. Markers were cast-in to aid in an accurate estimation of the part’s orientation for a pick-and-place operation from a conveyor belt and stationary bin. Te stove components were flat with dimensions varying between 0.3 and 0.9 sq. in. (200 and 600 sq. mm) and thicknesses between 0.2 and 0.3 in. (5 and 8 mm). Pick- ing from a conveyor belt when parts were lying separately at a distance was conveniently implemented for automation. But when parts were combined in random order in a bin, issues arose in identifying the part


in the iron facility. Te yellow lines indicate the direction of travel of the electromagnet heads to enable part handling encompassing different workspaces.


Case Study Two: Modular Concept for Part Handling & Fixture Flexibility in an Aluminum Casting Facility


In the second case study, an aluminum casting facility wanted to analyze how and where it could use modular components for handling automation. It wanted to look into pallets and overhead conveyors for the internal transport of castings, which would require significant investment and maintenance costs because they would be specially tai- lored for each new product. During production, parts were transported around the facility on pallets that were linked to different assembly lines. For robotic grippers to handle


October 2015 MODERN CASTING | 39


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