Skimming the dross – robotic dross removal for galvanizing

There are many man­u­fac­tur­ers whose facil­i­ties run ²⁴⁄₇. Some of these facil­i­ties are gal­va­niz­ing plants that need to use robots to remove dross from their metal­lic zinc baths over and over through­out the end­less work day.

Remov­ing dross, or met­al oxides, from a zinc met­al bath dur­ing a 24-hour pro­duc­tion sched­ule can be dan­ger­ous work for humans, accord­ing to robot­ics.org. It is not only back-break­ing work, but it is also hot – 878 degrees hot – which can cause all kinds of injuries if work­ers are tired or not pay­ing attention.

By imple­ment­ing robot­ic dross removal for these zinc baths, man­u­fac­tur­ers are side­step­ping these pos­si­ble injuries to work­ers. Robots are not injured by high tem­per­a­tures, and they don’t need shifts or days off to recu­per­ate from a long day at work. This also means that when man­u­fac­tur­ers use robots to remove dross, they are also get­ting some­thing that can work the fac­to­ry sched­ule with­out down­time – 24÷7÷365.

And make no mis­take, this process has to be done con­tin­u­ous­ly, which is anoth­er rea­son that auto­mat­ed robot­ic removal of dross is pre­ferred. By switch­ing to robot­ic dross removers, man­u­fac­tur­ers will see an elim­i­na­tion of phys­i­cal ail­ments due to man­u­al dross removal, as well as a decrease in time it takes to get rid of dross.

Work­ers that were once in charge of dross removal can also be rotat­ed out into oth­er areas once dross removal is auto­mat­ed. These employ­ees can be moved to jobs that are less stren­u­ous and tax­ing, which will then improve morale on the line, and pos­si­bly in the entire facility.

Robots​.com, a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for Fanuc, Motoman, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and KUKA robot­ics, has sev­er­al indus­tri­al robot­ic mod­els for dross removal. These mod­els are ready to be pur­chased and cus­tomized to fit your facility’s needs. Many of these robots have been treat­ed with spe­cial coat­ings to pro­tect them in high-heat environments.

For more infor­ma­tion about automat­ing your dross removal with robots, con­tact Robots​.com today online or at 877−762−6881.