TECHNOLOGY | ROBOTS AND AUTOMATION
Right: Input mask for Smart- Removal Move In on the Wittmann R9 robot control system
Back at CBW, Konowal also points out that in its main market, thin-wall packaging, leading producers of injection moulding machines now have control features that allow its robots to have dynamic entry into the mould space for safety reasons. “Easy Package is the Sepro approach to open
integration between robot and IMM, and it is still the easiest approach to integration in the plastic industry,” claims Bernard. “Our customers can choose any press and any Sepro robot and we make them compatible. This includes integration of the robot controls into the IMM controls for simpler set up and operation.” Sepro already offers its customers more choice than any other supplier in the plastics industry, he claims. The company’s numerous robotic solutions include those designed and built entirely by Sepro and others developed with outside partners like Stäubli, Yaskawa Motoman and Machines Pagès. “At K 2019 we will be introducing new develop- ments in five-axis robots, cobotics, open integra- tion, and customer-centric solutions.” Reinhard Holzner is manager of project planning
or stopping only when humans enter the guarded space and returning to full speed when they depart. This enables the Seprobot to operate two to three times faster than a typical cobot. For many years, the only communication between a robot and the moulding machine were the signals that coordinated their more-or-less independent motions. “If you wanted more integration than that, you had to buy a package from a supplier that sold both robot and IMM, with only one control,” says Bernard. “Sepro has led the way towards greater interoperability by collaborat- ing with many machine OEMs so that the robot can be directly linked to the IMM control to simply set-up and optimise cycle time. In the future, we believe open integration will be fully universal.”
in the Automation and Periphery division at Engel, a leader in injection machines and automation. “At Engel, for a long time it has been a matter of course that within a production cell everyone ‘talks’ to everyone, and that all possible data are ex- changed with each other,” he says. “In the smart factory of the future, this networking will function across the entire machine pool, and, if necessary, even across several sites. “To this end, OPC UA provides us with a very high-performance and above all secure communica- tions model, and we are confident that it will estab- lish itself as the standard in the plastics industry. In the Engel system solution, machine, robot, and peripherals all access a common database, which reduces the risk of errors and, above all, increases efficiency. For example, the early start of the robot can be very easily set via a standardised entry field in the CC300 display of the machine. “Furthermore, our Easix articulated robots can
Star Automation puts EOATs online
No robot is complete without its End of Arm Tooling, or EOAT. The Eins division of Star Automation Europe recently launched a new e-commerce web site,
www.eins1.eu, where users of Star robots can easily buy EOATs components and have them shipped within 24 hours. The online catalogue
48 INJECTION WORLD | April 2019
features more than 1,300 products, including suction pads, grippers, cylinders, nippers, sensors, plates, fames and modules, quick-chuck changes. Star says that to get top performance levels, it has developed its Eins components with its own patented technologies and selected
top manufacturers like Vessel, SMC, and Omron “to bring to Europe renowned Japanese technology for elements such as blades, electronics, and metals”. Components can be used on six-axis and Cartesian robots from all manufacturers. �
www.star-europe.com
www.injectionworld.com
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