Sanding Robots Provide Consistent and Smooth Surfaces

Robot­ic sand­ing can give you that per­fect fin­ish with its abil­i­ty to pre­pare the sur­face prop­er­ly. It smooths down sur­faces using a cus­tom end of arm tool­ing in order to pro­duce a clean, even, silky, and fin­ished prod­uct. Auto­mat­ed sand­ing is able to cre­ate a con­sis­tent, 100% repro­ducible, and top qual­i­ty product.

Robot­ic sanders can either help sand some­thing pri­or to paint­ing or for a fix­ing stage in the devel­op­ment of pro­duc­tion. What­ev­er your fin­ish­ing needs may be, the skills and dai­ly fit­ness of man­u­al work­ers are no longer of con­cern. These automa­tion sys­tems can cre­ate supe­ri­or reli­a­bil­i­ty and ulti­mate ver­sa­til­i­ty on your pro­duc­tion line. The dif­fer­ence between a sander and a pol­ish­er is mere­ly the type of head you put on the push corp spin­dle. This means that an invest­ment in one of these indus­tri­al robots increas­es adapt­abil­i­ty, ver­sa­til­i­ty, and enables a mul­ti­tude of jobs. 

Some sand­ing robots can also con­duct an auto­mat­ic changeover of its abra­sive mate­r­i­al when nec­es­sary, exchang­ing old paper for new paper in around 15 – 30 sec­onds. Addi­tion­al­ly, auto­mat­ed sand­ing sys­tems typ­i­cal­ly save about 30% of time when com­pared to man­u­al sanding. 

Anoth­er huge advan­tage about inte­grat­ing an auto­mat­ed sand­ing sys­tem is that they can work with a vari­ety of shapes, sizes, or mate­ri­als. Addi­tion­al­ly, sand­ing automa­tion sys­tems will com­plete a job through the pro­gram­ming of a robot to con­duct the same move­ments a human would do while sand­ing a work piece. Man­u­al sand­ing comes with con­straints, hard­ships, and dan­gers that can end up mak­ing the process more lengthy and cost­ly, in the end. Every­thing is auto­mat­ed when sand­ing solu­tions and the robots are able to work 24 hours a day.

Robot­ic automa­tion is con­stant­ly adapt­ing and evolv­ing at fast rates to meet the desires of the cus­tomers. In sand­ing sys­tems, these advance­ments make a robot­ic sand­ing sys­tem even more con­vinc­ing for your sur­face fin­ish­ing needs. 

Soft­ware and hard­ware upgrades sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve the sand­ing process. Robots are now equipped with sen­sor sys­tems that help main­tain the con­tract pres­sure in all posi­tions, no mat­ter the shape, size, or mate­r­i­al. These sen­sors and soft­ware pro­grams can more accu­rate­ly reg­u­late the con­tact pres­sure than man­u­al, hand-held sanders. A robot can also be pro­grammed to sand with dif­fer­ent con­tact pres­sures or removal rates, depend­ing on need or pro­gram­ming select. 

There are dif­fer­ent advanced soft­ware pro­grams depend­ing on the man­u­fac­tur­er. Click the fol­low­ing links to read more specifics about Fanuc’s Tac­tile Intel­li­gence Sys­tem, ABB’s Inte­grat­ed Force Con­trol, Motoman’s MotoFit, and KUKA’s inte­grat­ed sensors. 

Each man­u­fac­tur­er aims to help the robots sense and see their envi­ron­ment and work pieces. For any fin­ish­ing job, such as sand­ing, the abil­i­ty for a robot to see and feel with vision and force con­trol tech­nolo­gies tru­ly rais­es the tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ties of robots and improves the over­all eco­nom­ics of using them. These supe­ri­or capa­bil­i­ties also enable an eas­i­er adap­ta­tion to vary­ing sur­faces, part vari­a­tions, dimen­sions, loca­tions, and con­sis­ten­cy of materials. 

Robots​.com offers a vari­ety of sand­ing robots by Motoman, Fanuc, KUKA, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and ABB. Experts are ready to help talk you through your needs and find the best solu­tion, even if that means inte­grat­ing a cus­tomized sys­tem for you. Con­tact Robots​.com experts online or at 877−762−6881.