Adaptive Machining – ABB Force Control Packages

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, when a pro­gram­mer begins to pro­gram a robot to per­form machin­ing or oth­er appli­ca­tions, there is the need to define the robot path and the speed at which the robot will oper­ate. ABB has found a way to make their machin­ing appli­ca­tions more adapt­able to dif­fer­ent parts using their Force Con­trol packages.

So why is there a prob­lem with using the tra­di­tion­al way when pro­gram­ming machin­ing robots? Accord­ing to ABB, the speed and path will then be a con­stant, and will be inde­pen­dent of the process forces. This means that if the path does not coin­cide with the sur­face and dimen­sions of a par­tic­u­lar part being machined, the man­u­fac­tur­er will expe­ri­ence prob­lems with qual­i­ty. It may even dam­age the tool­ing on the robot, which would cause shut­downs and cost­ly repairs. 

To com­bat these issues with machin­ing appli­ca­tions, ABB has devel­oped Robot­Ware Machin­ing Force Con­trol. Force Con­trol by ABB allows a robot to adapt its machin­ing to the sur­face con­tours and the con­sis­ten­cy of the mate­ri­als it is machin­ing, ABB stat­ed. This will allow cus­tomers to access a new lev­el of robot­ic intel­li­gence on their machin­ing lines when work­ing with steel, stain­less steel, alu­minum, mag­ne­sium, wood, plas­tics, glass, and more. 

Force Con­trol comes with three updat­ed func­tions, includ­ing FC Graph­i­cal Pro­gram­ming Inter­face, FC Pres­sure, and FC Speed­Change. These Force Con­trol func­tions allow man­u­fac­tur­ers to improve their machin­ing process­es, which will enhance the qual­i­ty of their prod­ucts, reduce the time need­ed to pro­gram their robot sys­tems, reduce cycle times, and even low­er costs. 

All in all, the addi­tion of a Force Con­trol pack­age from ABB will up your machin­ing game and allow your com­pa­ny to pro­vide bet­ter qual­i­ty prod­ucts to your cus­tomers. The Force Con­trol pack­age is cur­rent­ly avail­able for the IRB 140, IRB 2400, IRB 4400, IRB 6600, IRB 6620, and IRB 7600 robots. 

Would you like more infor­ma­tion about ABB Force Con­trol and what it can do for your machin­ing process­es? Robots​.com can help! Robots​.com is a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for ABB Robot­ics, and our team can assist you in learn­ing more about this ABB offering. 

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact Robots​.com today at 877−762−6881 or reach experts online.