Lockheed Martin using robot painting simulation

Paint­ing automa­tion has been in place for many years in the auto­mo­tive indus­try. With the intro­duc­tion of robot paint sim­u­la­tors, even more indus­tries are begin­ning to use paint­ing automa­tion, includ­ing the defense industry.

Defense con­trac­tor Lock­heed Mar­tin began automat­ing their paint­ing process­es in 2011, when they need­ed a faster way to paint their F‑35 Light­ning II jets in Raleigh, NC, accord­ing to assem​bly​mag​.com. Many man­u­fac­tur­ers are always look­ing to improve the effi­cien­cy of their process­es, and Lock­heed Mar­tin was one of those manufacturers.

Even though the defense con­trac­tor under­stood the ben­e­fits of paint­ing automa­tion like the increase of speed and accu­ra­cy, while also increas­ing the health lev­el of work­ers in their fac­to­ry, it was the robot paint­ing sim­u­la­tor that helped them to auto­mate their system.

A robot­ic paint sim­u­la­tor is a com­put­er pro­gram that sim­u­lates the paint­ing process from start to fin­ish, show­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers exact­ly how the robot will move and inter­act with its envi­ron­ment and the things around it. This saves mon­ey for man­u­fac­tur­ers because the robot inte­gra­tor doesn’t have to build a mock-up of the sys­tem pri­or to pre­sent­ing it to the manufacturer.

Lock­heed Mar­tin used this paint­ing robot sim­u­la­tor to make sure that all of their robots were placed in pre­cise posi­tions to avoid any col­li­sions dur­ing oper­a­tion. It also helped Mar­tin con­fig­ure the two dif­fer­ent auto­mat­ed sys­tems they use. There is a three-robot sys­tem that paints the aircraft’s exte­ri­or, and anoth­er two robot sys­tem for the interior.

The process of robot­ic paint­ing sim­u­la­tion allows man­u­fac­tur­ers to vir­tu­al­ly define, plan, cre­ate and mon­i­tor the pro­duc­tion and assem­bly process­es that involve paint, the arti­cle stat­ed. By using this soft­ware, the com­pa­ny is able to max­i­mize pro­duc­tion effi­cien­cy, low­er costs and improve quality.

For more infor­ma­tion on robot­ic paint­ing sim­u­la­tors, con­tact Robots​.com online or at 877−762−6881.