Objetive:
Our client, in one of its production facilities, wants to optimize the performance of a Kuka robot for the collection of finished product from a tray and its subsequent palletizing, increasing the number of collected products on each extraction (from 4 to 6 suction pads), and the speed and the functionalities of the palletizing by programming the PLCs, Robot and SCADA.
The result is a great improvement in productivity, which allows, after optimizing the management of the trajectories/orientations, to avoid the singularities of the axes, to improve the way of collecting and palletizing the product, to reduce the working speed of the robot but paradoxically gain cycle times, all due to the “intelligence” created in the programming. This means more mechanical life of the robot with greater cycle performance, increasing production.
Functionalities, characteristics and ADVANTAGES:
In the stacking recipe management system (definable from an HMI and a PLC), the recipes contain in a simple way the definition of the collections and palletizing, reporting the following advantages:
- The collection points (front or side and their orientations) for each suction pad: It is enough to define the bases, the intermediate points and the trajectories to them. The rest is done by the implementation automatically, which subsequently sends the data of the work points to the robot.
- In the palletizing, the drop points for each suction pad are defined, establishing the stacking mosaic completely, in terms of their heights (Multilayer) and their orientations, for each suction pad/product.
- Automatic buffer table management. In the mosaic configurations not multiples of the products necessary to complete a layer or mosaic, the products are left/collected in/from a buffer table at the time it is necessary for the process, efficiently and automatically.
- Efficient homing management (Return to Home position of the Robot). Stopping the automatic process of the robot at any point, if it is necessary to return to home, this is done in a correct and coordinated way. The operator presses a single button on the HMI panel so that the robot returns properly without collisions and without having to operate the robot’s own console.
- Management and implementation of safety cubes, both by software and by hardware, increasing the safety of people and installation.
- The robot is the slave of the master (PLC). It is the PLC that knows in every moment the process cycle and that orders the different jobs to be carried out by the robot. This makes the application expandable to new functionalities (pieces to rejections, or other functionalities) in a simple way.
- Our client can define new forms of palletizing with new products, without having to call us to “collect points”. It has an autonomous system for it.
- Commissioning and improvements are done maintaining manufacturing. Production during commissioning is reduced minimally by having simulated the entire system in our offices prior to its implementation.
This palletizing philosophy is exportable to other processes and products, in which to have an autonomous palletizing definition system, where the end customer is self-sufficient for the production of new mosaics and is also not subject to any specific palletizing package of the robot manufacturer. Therefore, it is applicable to any common robot (Kuka, ABB, Fanuc or others) and independent of the PLC that may be connected to the robot.
We will be happy to study your palletizing or robotic application and give you the best solution.
INISA, for your palletizing using robots
