SHOP SOLUTIONS Continued from P53
UR robot was the only robot that we thought could do the job. It’s got the speed and precision of a standard indus- trial robot with the ability to move around and work next to humans,” said Bush. SFEG placed the UR robots on pedestals with wheels and is now building the fl eet of mobile UR robots deployed throughout the sheet metal department. The robots are being integrated into the entire production cycle from cutting the initial blank on the blanking press to forming, folding and fi nal assembly of the electrical components. Additional robots are planned to help tend the turret presses and press brakes. General Manager Rob Goldiez said, “We’re seeing about a
20% increase having a pace setter with the Universal Robots working hand in hand with our people.” The UR robots work- ing the motor fi eld line are a UR5 and a UR10 robot named after their payload in kilos. The robots all feature 0.1-mm repeatability and span in reach from 19.7 to 51.2" (500–1300 mm).
The UR5 is placed at the end of the line right next to an employee that hands the robot a motor fi eld part. The UR5 picks up the part, puts it in a holder, picks up a wire cutter to trim the wires, and then places the part for the UR10 robot to pick up and place on a conveyor for fi nal assembly. “We can interlock multiple robots together and
read through Modbus the TCP connections and robot status. We can also pass information along to other software packages, and collect data. It opens up a lot of doors to do a lot of things we’re just now beginning to look at,” said principal engi- neer Jamie Cook. A UR robot comes with a touch screen pen- dant that all programming is done through. Direct- ing the robot arm can be done either through ar- row keys on the screen, or by simply grabbing the robot arm and “teaching” it the desired moves between waypoints. That eliminated the structured text programming Cook usually had to code when working with traditional robots. “It was really easy to learn and it went much smoother than I anticipated. I would say it took a third to half of the implementation time out of it based on previous experiences I’ve had,” Cook said.
As SFEG looked for tasks to automate, eliminating mo- notonous and potentially dangerous tasks was the number one priority. Another task now handled by the mobile UR robot fl eet is fi lling epoxy into circuit boards.
In the past, employees would make up a big batch of
circuit boards and would stand there and manually fi ll them with two-part epoxy and send them down the curing line. Today, the robot does that all day long enabling us to go to a one-piece fl ow. Safety hazards are now avoided on the mo- tor fi eld line by having a UR robot handle the wire cutting. “It’s a potential carpal tunnel syndrome application cutting about 16,000 wires a day by hand. So we thought that was a great place to put robots—let them get carpal tunnel!” “We’re seeing about 1 to 1 movement of people from
where we put in a robot that allows us to move a person to another area of the business. We have 14 robots from Universal Robots right now and as we have all those implemented, we expect to be able to reposition 14 employees,” said Goldiez.
“Thelma & Louise” UR5 and UR10 robots move motor fi eld parts through a wire cutting application and onto a packaging conveyor for fi nal assembly working in tandem with their SFEG human colleagues.
One of the next robot tasks currently being developed at SFEG is putting c-clips on armatures. At the varnish oven, two UR10s will be loading and unloading baskets with mo- tors. One UR10 is already deployed at the end of the varnish conveyor, working as a simple transfer station, moving bas- kets between lines. “We’re looking at everything we’re designing now new to
make sure we can assemble it with a robot. If we can’t put that together with a robot, we’ve got to go back to the draw- ing board and try again.” For more information from Universal Robots USA Inc., go to
www.universal-robots.com, or phone 631-610-9664.
March 2016 |
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