Automated Machinery With Robots

Machin­ery automa­tion will improve a company’s com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, reduce pro­duc­tion costs, and improve prod­uct qual­i­ty. The most obvi­ous ben­e­fit of automa­tion is that it saves labor costs and takes man­u­al work­ers out of haz­ardous envi­ron­ments, but it also saves ener­gy and mate­ri­als while improv­ing accu­ra­cy and precision.

Two types of automa­tion include feed­back con­trol and sequence con­trol. Feed­back con­trol is con­tin­u­ous and involves tak­ing mea­sure­ments with a sen­sor and mak­ing adjust­ments. Sequen­tial con­trol is used when a pro­grammed sequence of oper­a­tions is per­formed. Usu­al­ly a sin­gle com­put­er will pro­vide both feed­back and sequence con­trol in an indus­tri­al application.

Com­mon mis­takes are made when pur­chas­ing auto­mat­ed machin­ery. First, the man­u­fac­tur­er needs to ensure that a detailed equip­ment spec­i­fi­ca­tion will define his expec­ta­tions. Com­pa­nies should also con­sid­er the tech­ni­cal exper­tise required to main­tain the equip­ment on a dai­ly basis. Com­pa­nies should also con­sid­er the eco­nom­ic impact of how fre­quent­ly the prod­uct mix changes. The sys­tem should be able to accom­mo­date future change with­out hav­ing to start from scratch each time.

Engi­neered Machined Prod­ucts (EMP) part­nered with Fanuc to design robot­ic sys­tems to max­i­mize their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Togeth­er they devel­oped a solu­tion for high-vol­ume machin­ing oper­a­tions. The Toploader series of Fanuc artic­u­lat­ed gantry robots reduce floor space and pro­vide six-axis dex­ter­i­ty for oper­a­tions such as degat­ing, deglash­ing, label­ing, pack­ag­ing, and pal­letiz­ing. The M‑710iT Toploader was the mod­el cho­sen to ser­vice eight machine portals.

The Fanuc R2000iA/165F robot is also used in sev­er­al machin­ing cells at EMP’s fac­to­ries. A machin­ing cell that process­es water pump impellers con­tains two of these mod­els along with two Fanuc 2‑D Vision sys­tems. Suc­cess with these machin­ing oper­a­tions has con­vinced EMP to become ded­i­cat­ed to explor­ing automa­tion to its fullest extent.

While the invest­ment in auto­mat­ed machin­ery can be daunt­ing to some pur­chasers, appli­ca­tions like assem­bly, pro­cess­ing, and pack­ag­ing ben­e­fit great­ly from automa­tion. Now, auto­mat­ed machin­ery and equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers are even devel­op­ing cus­tom 3D soft­ware appli­ca­tions to achieve a com­pet­i­tive edge. 

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