AUTOMOTIVE ELECTRONICS
or rework. That, at least, is the basic concept. However, the heart is as sensitive as it is vital for the finished electric car model – and the individual assembly steps must accordingly be carried out with care and precision. Robot system: screw-fastening under cleanroom conditions for e-mobility This means, for example, that bonding points in the manufacturing process are first cleaned. For this purpose, a KUKA KR AGILUS passes through the points with a plasma lance and frees them from dirt particles and other contaminants with ionized gas at a temperature of 30,000 degrees Celsius. The robot then applies sealant. A KR CYBERTECH inserts various components into the housing. “Even the smallest electric currents can destroy the sensitive components,” says Franz Steinbauer, “that is why electromagnetic compatibility is particularly important here.” A robot then screws the components together. “In total, we use 158 screws in eight different variants,” explains the project manager. “The system feeds a screw through a tube every four seconds.” While this may sound trivial, in practice it is more complicated. Since the screws are delivered as bulk goods, and this type of packaging automatically generates abrasion between the individual metal parts, a deflector separates screws and dust using compressed air. Assembly is carried out practically under cleanroom conditions. Water and electricity are incompatible in production – or are they?
“Over the entire assembly processes, we collect a so-called data tree for each component. This means that from the smallest screw to the housing cover of the electric vehicle, we can precisely trace where they come from and how they were processed. This enables subsequent conclusions to be drawn
“
It is not sufficient
simply to line up a row of robotic cells,” explains Dullinger. “There is no blueprint for these processes, no best practices.
if the driver of the electric car experiences a failure,” explains Head of Sales Georg Dullinger. In the meantime, leak tests and function tests for the vehicle are repeatedly carried out in order to ensure the high quality of the processing. The final step is particularly fascinating: a KR CYBERTECH robot picks up
”
the finished control units for the electric cars from the conveyor and fills them with water. “Water, electricity and data technology are actually never meant to meet each other,” says SAR project manager Franz Steinbauer. “But in this case we bring everything together within about 100 seconds; the water is used for cooling during the following steps.“ What degree of automation is called for? The KUKA robot places the control units in the high-voltage and low-voltage insulation test station – after all, at the end of the production process, alternating current pulses through the “arteries” of the electric car. The operating system is then loaded onto the electric hearts – the breath of life is infused into them, in a manner of speaking. Once all the tests are positive and the water has been drained out again, the control units are ready to start their lives as vehicle pacemakers.
Operators currently load the production line and then remove the finished control units for the electric cars at the end. In the long term, however, this process step can also be automated. “With the aid of automated guided vehicle systems, we could already have the various electronics components picked up from a so-called supermarket now and taken to the stations,” says Georg Dullinger. “The solution is highly scalable and customizable.”
It would be possible to set up the production line in various stages, for example, with parts of it even being used by suppliers at their own plants. “With the aid of KUKA robots, we can offer any degree of expansion, right up to complete production,” says Dullinger. “What degree of automation we implement depends entirely on our customers.”
KUKA
www.kuka.com MARCH 2023 | ELECTRONICS TODAY 35
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