Top Reasons to Automate Your Foundry with Robotics

Foundry robots excel in harsh environments bringing their power, safety, increased savings, accuracy, and flexibility. Foundry robots have an IP 67 rating and can endure harsh conditions with ease and work without fatigue. They can also handle heavy payloads and reduce the injuries of human workers by taking care of the repetitive and back breaking labor.

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Blis­ter­ing tem­per­a­tures, metal­lic dust, and molten mate­ri­als – any of these fac­tors would con­tribute to a harsh work envi­ron­ment, and a foundry has all three. How­ev­er, these fac­tors have also helped to keep foundries on the for­ward edge of the robot­ic automa­tion frontier.

Typ­i­cal foundry work includes pour­ing melt­ed met­als into molds, trans­fer­ring the molds, break­ing the met­al parts from their molds, and remov­ing mate­r­i­al from the met­al parts to make them uni­form. Foundry robots excel in each one of these applications.

So, why is robot­ic automa­tion ide­al for foundry use? There are sev­er­al rea­sons, but the top five rea­sons are pow­er­ful design, safe­ty, sav­ings, accu­ra­cy, and flexibility.

Safe­ty is one of the most impor­tant fac­tors in foundry work. A wrong move could mean severe injury or death to a work­er. The extreme con­di­tions men­tioned above mean that work­ers deal with con­tin­u­ous threats like burns, heat exhaus­tion, or res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems from breath­ing in metal­lic dust. Robot­ic foundry sys­tems keep work­ers safe from these con­di­tions by step­ping in and assum­ing the risk. Foundry robots are required to have an indus­tri­al pro­tec­tion rat­ing (IP 67). They can endure the con­di­tions with ease and work with­out fatigue. Even when the heat is extreme­ly intense, the robot and its end effec­tor can be safeguarded.

Foundry robot­ic sys­tems are designed to be pow­er­ful. Hefty pay­load capac­i­ties and wide work envelopes allow robots to tack­le heavy lift­ing and wide loads, which are com­mon in foundries. This also plays into the safe­ty aspect. By replac­ing work­ers with a foundry robot, work­ers are saved from injuries caused by repet­i­tive move­ments and strain while lift­ing heavy objects. 

Anoth­er great ben­e­fit of using robot­ic automa­tion in foundries is that robots give foundries flex­i­bil­i­ty. They can han­dle a wide range of appli­ca­tions- mate­r­i­al removal, dis­pens­ing, and mate­r­i­al han­dling. Using auto­mat­ic tool chang­ers, these robot­ic sys­tems can switch quick­ly between tasks, which leads to sim­pli­fied, faster pro­duc­tion. Using auto­mat­ic tool chang­ers, these robot­ic sys­tems can switch quick­ly between tasks, which leads to sim­pli­fied, faster pro­duc­tion. The accu­ra­cy of foundry robots just fur­ther improves the flex­i­bil­i­ty and cycles dur­ing appli­ca­tions. Robot­ic automa­ton has top notch repeata­bil­i­ty. This is extreme­ly impor­tant when it comes to han­dling molten met­al. Every move­ment is pro­grammed; every point exact. This lev­el of pre­ci­sion is nec­es­sary, espe­cial­ly when debur­ring and oth­er mate­r­i­al removal applications.

The last, but def­i­nite­ly not least, top rea­son to use robot­ic automa­tion in a foundry is the sav­ings. Incor­po­rat­ing robot­ic automa­tion in your foundry con­serves mon­ey and time. With robots, there is less of a chance of drop­ping or dam­ag­ing parts, and few­er acci­dents mean less finan­cial out­put as well.

Are you inter­est­ed in incor­po­rat­ing robot­ic automa­tion into your foundry? Robots​.com offers a wide selec­tion of foundry robots from Fanuc, Motoman, ABB, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and KUKA. Call Robots​.com today online or 8777626881 for more information.

Mar 31, 2015