FEATURE Plastics & Injection Moulding
How cobots can unlock injection moulding productivity
By Mark Gray, Country Manager UK & Ireland, Universal Robots
P
lastics processing, including injection moulding, is an important sector of the manufacturing industry for Irelan d. It
has historically been heavily reliant on a readily available pool of migrant labour, meaning Brexit and Covid-19 travel restrictions are seriously testing the industry’s resilience. With the demand for plastics components,
particularly in the medical sector, set to grow in the future, companies are thinking about how to attract and retain workers, increase productivity and meet new customer requirements. In light of this, many organisations are considering the move to automation. However, there are a number of common misconceptions that are hindering widespread automation adoption in Ireland. Some smaller businesses are put off by the cost, complexity and infl exibility of traditional industrial robots, which were designed for high volume and mass production environments – not always refl ective of SMEs. For those injection moulders who need greater
fl exibility and who specialise in short production runs, collaborative robots (cobots) present an attractive alternative. They can easily fi t into any size production line, and can be quickly reprogrammed and redeployed should production needs change. Cobots work alongside existing employees and boost capacity by allowing operators to delegate dirty, dull or dangerous repetitive tasks.
30 November 2021 Irish Manufacturing
The operator is then free to focus on the more complex part of the operation. ROI is dependent on how much of a human worker’s processes can be taken on by the cobot. However, reports suggest that a cobot can be worth anything from half a worker up to as many as two extra pairs of hands. They work best when there are simple programmable tasks that need to be consistently carried out, so machine tending is an ideal use case. In the last 18 months in particular, this ability to
respond to demand with a fl exible solution that delivers extra capacity has proven critical for many injection-moulders. Cobots have proved attractive as they can be deployed quickly and register a fast return on their investment.
HOW DYNAMIC GROUP PLUGGED THE LABOUR GAP Dynamic Group was having diffi culty staffi ng its injection moulding production operation and wanted to make better use of its existing workforce. Tending an injection moulding machining cycle can be labour intensive. It also requires high handling consistency due to the heat sensitive material being moulded. The company initially worried that a fl exible automation solution that could be moved from application to application, addressing the company’s high mix/low volume production, would be cost prohibitive, and require extensive programming. It
decided to add three cobots to its operation, due to their competitive price point and fl exibility. The fi rst robot tends a complete machine cycle. Dynamic Group uses it to pick and place “book frames” that hold pieces to be moulded into the injection moulding machine. It then transfers the units to a trimming fi xture and places the part in front of an operator for further handling. The second injection moulding application uses a traditional cartesian robot that drops a moulded piece down a slide where the cobot picks it up and places it in a degating fi xture, then palletises the part on a table in front of the operator for inspection. The third robot is deployed in a kitting
application. Using a vacuum gripper it picks up a “clam shell” – the bottom part of a plastic box – then it places sterile wipes and saline solution into the clam shell, and pushes the box onto a conveyor. Before adopting cobots, Dynamic Group had to deploy six to seven employees at once to do the kitting application. It can now redeploy those employees elsewhere and make better use of their skills. Three cobots have now taken over several repetitive tasks, resulting in improved product consistency and production capacity increases of up to 400 per cent. It demonstrates how automation can deliver the productivity, profi tability and fl exibility that plastics businesses need to weather diffi cult times. Universal Robots
www.universal-robots.com
www.irish-manufacturing.com
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