The Clean Manufacturing Game Part 9 of 10

Are You Playing the Clean Manufacturing Game?
A 10 part blog series discussing important aspects of clean manufacturing technology and implementation strategy.

Robots to the Rescue – Part 9 of 10

Robot CleanTech has become a mainstay due to their flexibility, reliability and repeatability. Prior to robots, material handling and machine tending applications were purely a manual task. Operators transporting material from one fixture or machine to the next, waiting on the equipment to finish its task, and then relocation of the processed part or parts to another tool or process fixture; these were some of the most common manual tasks that required several operators to manufacture the product. These material handling and machine tending tasks are now almost always accomplished using robots, especially in operations requiring high speed and accuracy.

The advantages of Robot CleanTech include:

• No wait time for operators since the robots are performing material handling and wait times could be absorbed by having them perform additional processing operations if possible.

• Robots have negligible downtime resulting in limited production loss

• Robots are inexpensive to operate in the long run compared to manual labor and the return on investment can be fast based on the demand for the manufactured product.

• Robots are repeatable to a high degree of accuracy which results in lowered scrap parts once the robot tasks are optimized.

While standard off the shelf robots have one arm to which you can mount tooling, the advent of tool changers and dual equipment end-of-arm tool (EOAT) design have helped make robotic operations more flexible and lean in terms of higher per cycle utilization. In the die cast industry, robots are currently being used for material handling parts as well as de-gating and finishing operations like deburring and grinding. In the Automotive industry, robots in body shop applications are in some cases used for material handling of parts as well as welding or sealant application through the use of dual application end-effectors or floor mounted pedestal equipment. In applications involving multiple product models, tool changing equipment can be used for robots to disengage/engage new EOATs. Servo motor driven external axes allow robots to be more flexible by acting as auxiliary axes of motion to ensure maximum robot utilization.

This flexibility that allows engineers to process as many operations as possible within the given cycle time and feasibility constraints helps make manufacturing processes lean. Robot vendors have already developed robots with multiple arm configurations. In the future, these multi-arm robots will be more of the norm with operations that are faster, more efficient and lean.

Vision systems are being used in combination with robots to help inspect parts for feature existence and feature sizes. Vision systems are more commonly used on robots to act as dynamic guidance systems that allow robots to vary their motion targets based on vision generated guidance information. Vision technology and robots are a natural pairing and the combination has resulted in making robotic operations leaner than ever before.

Operations such as racking and de-racking of parts, part picking from bins, visual inspection of parts, which were normally handled by human operators, are now being performed by robots with higher consistency, accuracy, repeatability and speed due to vision systems used in conjunction with the robots. Finishing operations such as routering, grinding, sealing are now being applied more accurately with fewer imperfections and scrap parts thereby contributing solidly to lean manufacturing. In the inspection arena, robots are utilized heavily in Flexible Measurement Systems (FMS). Robots mounted with vision cameras to collect feature information for multiple inspection locations have resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of vision cameras and fixtures required to inspect parts. In the past, the same inspection would have been performed with several fixed vision cameras.

One of the primary drivers to automate a manufacturing process using robots is the safety factor. Most manufacturing operations have a degree of human injury risk. Some simple part transfer operations may be safe for humans to perform while others like unloading parts from a press/die or foundry operations with molten metal are definitely not fit for manual operations. In these cases, robots are invaluable in lowering risk to humans.

An unsafe workplace leads to human inefficiency driven by fear. This in turn leads to lowered production rates and employee retention. A safe and secure workplace improves morale and lowers costs, which in turn improves the bottom line. Unsafe working environments can lead to waste in terms of effort and time.

The above cases are just a few examples of how robots, if used correctly, can contribute to cleaner manufacturing. Robots help achieve higher production quality at a reduced operating cost compared to manual manufacturing. They help produce more parts with fewer defects using less equipment while maintaining their flexibility for future changes.

The most significant impact to clean manufacturing related to robot CleanTech lies in their ease of use. Programming robots to perform manufacturing operations has evolved into an easy-to-use PC-based process that can be easily understood and applied by engineers as well as skilled trades at the plant floor.

CO2 CleanTech utilizes robots to provide reliability, accuracy, consistency and capacity. Robot CleanTech is also used to transport product through combination processes involving spray, immersion and plasma treatments, and production operations such as assembly, machining, soldering, and bonding.

David Jackson is President/CEO of Cleanlogix LLC and serves as the Chief Technology Officer for Cool Clean Technologies, Inc, based in Eagan, MN. He may be reached via e-mail at david.jackson@coolclean.com.

Part 10, the last part of this series, discusses thinking clean.