Objetive:
Engineering development for the retrofit of press + KUKA palletizing robot installation existing, adapting them by updating the equipment (Security PLC + Profinet communications and decentralized + New Kuka Robot + New HMI), programming all this and generating a new electric project. Carrying out the set-up at the scheduled maintenance shutdown for its installation (2 weeks).
This project, is a continuation of other projects successfully carried out for this same client in other robotic automations, replicating the self-sufficient palletizing generation model, that is, the client autonomously programs the different productions based on an HMI system that allows them to define all the necessary aspects of palletizing.
The product flow is:
At the product outlet of a press, there is a motor-driven servo chain, which moves the product between 5 stations (1 Reject, 2 Pick from the press, 3 Centre / Paint, 4 Station for collecting pieces by the robot, 5 temporary product buffer).
From the collecting station, and depending on the designed recipe according to the production, the robot performs all the palletizing with up to 6 suction pads, defining both the percentage of vacuum to be carried out and the orientations necessary to pick up and leave the product on the pallet.
The result is a great improvement in productivity, which allows, after optimizing the management of trajectories/orientations and the way of picking up and palletizing the product, reducing the working speed of the robot, but paradoxically to gain cycle times, all this due to the “intelligence” created in the programming carried out. This means longer mechanical life of the robot with higher cycle performance, increasing total 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 our implementation automatically, which later sends the working points data 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 non-multiple mosaic configurations of products needed to complete a layer or a mosaic, products are dropped/picked up on/from a buffer table at the time it is needed 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.
- 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 expandible to new functionalities (pieces to reject 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.
- Fast and planned commissioning, without delays in delivery of the supply.
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 delighted to study your palletizing or robotics application and give you our best solution.
INISA, for your palletizing using robots
