Design for Robotic Assembly

Cars, stove-tops, med­ical devices, and com­put­er parts… What do they all have in com­mon? Assem­bly robots are build­ing them as we speak. Robot­ic assem­bly is gain­ing speed in the man­u­fac­tur­ing of goods used every day across the globe. ​“The only way to make assem­bly process­es cost-effec­tive for North Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing is with robot­ics and automa­tion,” says Chris Blanchette, Nation­al Account Man­ag­er Assem­bly and Aero­space for Fanuc Amer­i­ca Cor­po­ra­tion in Rochester Hills, Michi­gan. Proof is in the pud­ding as the Robot­ic Indus­tries Asso­ci­a­tion showed Assem­bly orders up by 96% com­pared with the same quar­ter last year; this made for record-break­ing sales for the first half of 2014!

You may think that it is risky or dif­fi­cult to design a robot­ic assem­bly sys­tem that works per­fect­ly for you. Don’t fear; that is why Robots​.com is here! We have put the fol­low­ing resources togeth­er to help you design your next assem­bly automa­tion system.

Iden­ti­fy the Assem­bly Application: 

Click here to view all of the appli­ca­tions we cov­er at Robots​.com.

Assem­bly robots haven’t met many appli­ca­tions they can’t han­dle. Whether it is weld­ing auto­mo­tive com­po­nents, pal­letiz­ing, dis­pens­ing, mov­ing and hold­ing a part in place for attach­ment, paint­ing, or build­ing a solar pan­el, there is a per­fect assem­bly design for you.

Choose Your Assem­bly Robot: 

Click here to view our entire robot­ic assem­bly offer­ings.

There are many robot­ic con­fig­u­ra­tions avail­able for assem­bly robots. 

1. Six-Axis Robots pro­vide opti­mal strength, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and reach to com­plete the desired task. They are com­pact, high­ly dex­ter­ous, nim­ble robots to engage assem­blies from all angles. They are play­ing an ever-increas­ing role in the assem­bly space. We rec­om­mend the Fanuc R‑2000iA/​165F or the Motoman HP6.

2. SCARA Robots stand for ​“Selec­tive Com­pli­ant Assem­bly Robot Arm.” They are 4‑Axis robots that are ide­al for high-speed assem­bly. It gets its name as the arm is selec­tiv­i­ty com­pli­ant in the X‑Y direc­tion but rigid in the ​“Z” direc­tion to help with many types of assem­bly oper­a­tions, such as insert­ing a round pin in a round hole with­out bind­ing. Robots​.com rec­om­mends the Motoman HM-20 – 1000 or the KUKA KR 10.

3. Delta Robots have small­er pay­loads, but unpar­al­leled accel­er­a­tion and speed. They resem­ble a ceil­ing-mount­ed spi­der as motors in the base move the three linked arms. Its major mechan­i­cal axes act on the robot face-plate in par­al­lel rather than in series which allows it to be quick and pre­cise. Speeds of 10 mil­lime­ters per sec­ond are typ­i­cal while also accom­mo­dat­ing improved repeata­bil­i­ty at the tool tip which means it is per­fect for small part assem­bly. One of our top Delta robots is the Fanuc M3iA/​6s or the Motoman MPP3.

4. Dual Arm robots have helped to ease com­plex assem­bly appli­ca­tions by doing tasks such as hold­ing one part and insert­ing anoth­er part into it. For flex­i­ble parts or com­po­nents, such as tub­ing and hoses, dual arms can work togeth­er to sim­pli­fy the tool­ing and enable the appli­ca­tion to be done in a sim­pler way. A Dual Arm we rec­om­mend is the Motoman DIA10.

5. Col­lab­o­ra­tive robots are a rapid­ly emerg­ing area of indus­tri­al robot­ics also enter­ing assem­bly space. They are spe­cial­ly designed to oper­ate along­side human cowork­ers on an assem­bly line with­out the need for safe­ty guard­ing. Take a look at the Fanuc CR-7iA or the Uni­ver­sal Robot col­lab­o­ra­tive robots that we offer.

Choose Your Assem­bly Software

Click here to view the soft­ware that Robots​.com rec­om­mends.

The machine vision soft­ware avail­able these days is incred­i­bly ben­e­fi­cial in guid­ing robots to pre­cise part loca­tion, and inspec­tion. In addi­tion, force sens­ing equips assem­bly robots with the sense of touch in all 6 degrees of free­dom. It mea­sures the forces and torque applied at the EOAT and offers the robot con­trol sys­tem feed­back for hybrid force-com­pli­ance move­ment con­trol of the end-of-arm tool. These options are trans­form­ing assem­bly lines and clean rooms.

Con­sid­er elec­tron­ics whose assem­bly tol­er­ances are get­ting tighter as the parts and pieces are get­ting small­er. The nec­es­sary pre­ci­sion, con­sis­ten­cy, and min­i­mal cost required all make robot­ics assem­bly a crit­i­cal part of the pro­duc­tion process.

“Peo­ple can’t do the real­ly fine tasks that are called upon for assem­bling next-gen­er­a­tion mobile devices or wear­ables,” says Rush LaSelle, Direc­tor of Automa­tion at Jabil Cir­cuit Inc. ​“The prod­uct life cycles aren’t long enough to sup­port cus­tomized machine tools.”

​“In our world, in elec­tron­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing, there are robot­ic solu­tions and flex­i­ble automa­tion that’s capa­ble of get­ting to the lev­el of pre­ci­sion that we can now take advan­tage of the tech­nol­o­gy,” says Rush LaSelle, Direc­tor of Automa­tion at Jabil Cir­cuit Inc. ​“Labor rates in Chi­na and oth­er parts of the world are ris­ing, and so every­body is look­ing for a low­er cost alternative.”

For­tu­nate­ly, the com­plex assem­blies and sen­sor-based tech­nolo­gies are get­ting bet­ter, cheap­er, and more user-friend­ly. The user inter­face is now advanced enough so a high­ly skilled work­er is no longer nec­es­sary. Visu­al ser­vo­ing has enabled the robot world to achieve pre­ci­sion assem­bly bet­ter than 10 microns.

Choose Your EOAT

Click here to read more about the EOAT options.

End of arm tool­ing can be pur­chased stan­dard or cus­tomized for each assem­bly robot to cater to the man­u­fac­tur­ing require­ments. They can range from grip­pers, vac­u­um cups, 3‑jaw chucks, high-speed spin­dles, cylin­ders, or drills.

A stan­dard EOAT is mass pro­duced and can eas­i­ly be ordered as we work with sev­er­al dif­fer­ent sup­pli­ers to ensure that cus­tomers get the best avail­able. A stan­dard EOAT can be eas­i­ly accessed and will not length­en the build time for your robot, how­ev­er it is designed to fit a num­ber of prod­ucts, and may not be the per­fect fit for your spe­cif­ic needs.

If you choose the cus­tomized route, engi­neers design­ing the sys­tem decide which end effec­tors would be best for the appli­ca­tion and then fab­ri­cate and build to the spec­i­fi­ca­tion. This will add time to the build but ulti­mate­ly a cus­tom EOAT can pro­duce bet­ter func­tion­al­i­ty dur­ing pro­duc­tion. Robots​.com can con­tract com­pa­nies to build cus­tom end effec­tors that can poten­tial­ly be done EOAT in-house.

Choos­ing the right EOAT can ensure grop­ing is done cor­rect­ly. This is a key fea­ture where the robot moves the EOAT close to the loca­tion of assem­bly and tran­si­tions into grop­ing where the robot makes a pat­tern around the part where it’s sup­posed to be assem­bled. It moves slow­ly and pro­gres­sive­ly, in dif­fer­ent pre-pro­grammed pat­terns, to make con­tact and sense the forces, motion, and direc­tion, and then act accord­ing to dri­ve the parts together. 

The impor­tant thing is to spend the mon­ey on the cor­rect EOAT for the job since sens­ing and con­trol capa­bil­i­ty are the key.

Choose Your Workspace

Assem­bly is able shrink the foot­print of work cells by cre­at­ing com­plex sys­tems that com­bine mul­ti­ple oper­a­tions by using dif­fer­ent tool­ing. Ulti­mate­ly, a part pro­duced in this type of sys­tem gets assem­bled and checked, all at once.

A robot work­cell is nec­es­sary to com­plete a sys­tem that includes the robot, con­troller, and oth­er periph­er­als such as a part posi­tion­er and safe­ty envi­ron­ment. Cus­tom cells are built to cus­tomer spec­i­fi­ca­tions and allow for the lim­i­ta­tions and chal­lenges often found in an indus­tri­al set­ting. They are ide­al for appli­ca­tions a stan­dard work­cell would not be able to perform.

Assem­bly Robot Example

Robots are cur­rent­ly suc­cess­ful at tack­ling many com­plex assem­bly appli­ca­tions such as assem­bling gear box­es for Kawasa­ki motor­cy­cles. Flex­i­bil­i­ty to build dif­fer­ent gear box­es is key with Kawasa­ki with their many dif­fer­ent types of motor­cy­cles. Orig­i­nal­ly, the task was com­plet­ed by fix­ing a bear­ing case on a sur­face and a hand press­ing to dri­ve the bear­ing into the bore. 

Robot­ic assem­bly enabled a flex­i­ble cell to be cre­at­ed with fix­tures for dif­fer­ent gear box­es. The design allowed it to car­ry the crankcase and move it over the fix­ture where the bear­ings are mount­ed, and hold it there while the press comes down and dri­ves the case into the bear­ing. This enabled the robot to use posi­tion con­trol to tran­si­tion to a soft absorb mode as it holds the crankcase over the bear­ing, and then return to posi­tion con­trol mode and car­ry on with the job.

Choose Robots​.com for help on your next Assem­bly Design

Agile robots aug­ment­ed with force sen­sors and vision are unstop­pable. Watch­ing coor­di­nat­ed assem­bly robots work tire­less­ly, accu­rate­ly, quick­ly, and pre­cise­ly is the reflec­tion of a very promis­ing future for automation.

Robots​.com, a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for Fanuc, Motoman, ABB, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and KUKA robot­ics, and works with cus­tomers to build these robot­ic assem­blers on a reg­u­lar basis. Our team of engi­neers, tech­ni­cians and sales­men will work with you to select the right assem­bly robot, end effec­tor, con­troller and safe­ty pack­age to fit your application’s needs and your facility’s space requirements.

For more infor­ma­tion about what Robots​.com experts can do for you, con­tact us today at 877−762−6881.