Integrated Force Control with ABB

If you are looking to improve your sanding, polishing, or finishing of wooden parts, look no further than ABB’s integrated Force Control software. ABB always keeps the customer in mind; this is reflective in the quality in their robots and the company's incredible customer service. The automation solutions created by ABB help the wood industries to increase their total productivity, bring unmatched precision, incredibly fast ROI, and increase the overall speed of their product output.

With these statistics, it is no surprise that they are one of the leading robot manufacturers serving the wood sector. This makes ABB and their Force Control software the perfect solution for helping the latest wood industry demands and developments. ABB is already very relevant in several wood industries already. They are already involved in aiding the integration of automation systems and delivering a rapid return on investment for world leaders such as IKEA, VELUX, and Svedplan. Their innovative approach and total capability means the highest level of quality will be expected and produced.

This flexible software technology enables robots to sense their environment and work piece, further providing the ability to quickly adapt to varying surfaces and consistency of materials. It combines vision and feel to further improve robot’s tolerances of the variability found in real-world assembly and finishing operations. These two items alone raise the technical capabilities of robots, greatly improving the overall economics of using them for any finishing job, especially those with wooden parts.

ABB's Force Control Technology

ABB’s fully integrated force control is a pre-configured software and hardware that gives real-time tactile feedback.It is a one stop shop for advanced force control functionality and helps to help create extreme precision, reduce cycle times, and improve the overall process quality. ABB’s force control is also able to save programming time, measure geometrical differences, and increase the life of process tools. All of these attributes also help to decrease the initial setup and overall programming and training time.

There are three features that unite to increase the dimension of the robots use in wood industries that further provide faster processing times, high product quality, an increase in productivity, and reduced programming times. These features include FC Graphical Programming Interface, FC Pressure, and FC Speed Change. These help produce high performance real-time path correction based on sensor feedback which gives it a very fast response time. Also, there are features that allow for recovery and supervision.

When the force control is fully integrated in the robot, all of the required components are provided in order to easily use the Force sensor. Other options include the robot to be mounted or room fixed shielded high-flex cables, voltage measurement board, measurement interface to IRC5 controller, high overload protection (10 times nominal load), IP65 rating, and, of course, the force control software.

ABB's Vision Technology

Wood has natural flaws, such as knots, wormholes, bark pockets, etc., that require advanced software technologies. Manufacturers are able to reduce the waste that these flaws would normally deem too tough to work with, by using robotic vision. Vision Guided robotics (VGR) systems are very easy to integrate nowadays and able to deal with changing environments by using lighting, reflections, and object sensing.

ABB uses a vision system that uses a single camera to locate parts in 2D, 2.5D, or a 3D space. This allows the automation to take care of operations that used to necessitate human involvement. Additionally, there is a reduced need for expensive fixturing, pre-arranging, or placing of parts.

When you combine vision systems with force control, it increases a robot’s ability exponentially. So ABB has a Machining Force Control (FC) function to help increase the reliability, adaptability, and improve the consistency and surface contour of the materials being processed.

The applications to be used with this software span from grinding, sanding, and polishing, to deburring and assembly. ABB also offers an adaptive Force Control package for customers who would like to integrate the application/process themselves.

Contact Robots.com and Automate Today!

When compared with manual labor, it is evident that automation brings huge gains. With the ability to work 24-hours with no breaks, robotic technology brings high levels of output, lower costs, enhanced and more consistent process and product quality, and greater flexibility and efficiency. Robots also help to take over the hazardous tasks or environments those workers would be exposed to, improving the overall health and safety of the workplace.

ABB is determined to help conquer and solve the challenge of the wood industries with this intelligent software. They have already successfully created efficient robot-based automation for wood industries and plan to continue their legacy for years to come.

Robots.com representatives are ready to help you integrate a customized automated system, today! Contact Robots.com experts online or at 877-762-6881.