Improvements Made With Material Handling Robots
Brief Summary:
The robotic application of material handling brings many benefits for the system such as increased productivity, throughput, and decrease cycle time. Maintaining machinery is necessary for these systems to work at proper potential. Studying all parts of the equipment used allows for increased production by improving specific areas.
- Advantages of using robots in material handling applications include speed, payload capacity and consistent productivity. Increases in throughput are typically necessary to keep pace with production demands without installing additional robot cells. The techniques presented here will enable you to attain higher productivity from a given amount of floorspace and capital investment. Shorter cycle times can be achieved through the use of the following practical cell layout, hardware and software considerations both during the design phase and after installation.
- The location of the robot and peripheral equipment such as conveyors, machine tools, and pallet racks should be done with the sequence of operation in mind. Minimize the distance that the robot must travel from one program step to the next, especially on moves that require large movements of the slowest robot axes. For instance, the first axis, or base axis, of a six-axis vertically articulated robot is typically the slowest axis. If the robot is oriented such that a 270 degree rotation of the base axis is required to pick up a part and place it on a pallet, turn the robot around 180 degrees.
- This guarantees that the robot is in the correct position before the end effector closes or opens. On other motions, such as those between pick-up and set-down, set the parameters to a looser setting or use a continuous path setting so the robot does not stop or slow down.
- All hardware used in the workcell should be analyzed for potential to increase the throughput of the system. This includes not only end effectors, but also conveyors, feeders, escapements, doors, pneumatic slides and vacuum systems.
- In packaging applications, such as case packing and carton loading, it is common to handle 20-30 products per cycle. Machine tool load/unload applications use dual end effectors to unload a finished part from the spindle and then immediately load the next unprocessed part to maximize the utilization of the machine tool.
- Some robots' internal air lines are not large enough and will restrict air flow. In this case, use multiple internal lines to feed the vacuum generators or use a larger diameter, externally mounted supply line. The use of sensors to detect vacuum level at the suction cups is again preferred over software time delays. In applications where corrugated cardboard or other porous materials are being handled with vacuum cups, a high vacuum flow rate to the cups is necessary.
- Maintenance of system components is critical to keeping performance at its maximum possible level. Worn seals and loose fittings on pneumatic cylinders will cause air flow and pressure losses that can increase gripper actuation times. Dirty cylinder rods and linear bearings can cause components to stick.
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