Foreword: The upper body and the cylinder of the engine are relatively heavy. It is a very tedious task to transport them to the tooling of the machining center workbench and to transport the processed cylinder body during processing. Robots are used both at home and abroad to complete automatic feeding and blanking of cylinders. South Korea's Hyundai Motor's engine supplier requires that the finished cylinder be removed first, and then the total time for installing another cylinder to be machined onto the tooling must not exceed 14 seconds. Moreover, the stability of the robot must be very high, and almost no faults are allowed in the perennial work to ensure that it cannot affect production. Moreover, after the two parties have communicated technical details and signed technical agreements, they must complete the first of the four production lines within 60 days. At the end of the world, only DMT can fully meet the manufacturer's requirements to obtain a contract. DMT was very successful in completing the turnkey project for the first production line in 60 days. As the DMT's exclusive partner in China, Shenyang Rheintechnik is willing to introduce their successful experiences to Chinese users together with DMT. The DMT engine loading and unloading production line is introduced below.
First, the engine cylinder loading and unloading robot
It is required to use a robot to feed and blank the four machining centers at the same time. Within 14 seconds after the opening of the machining center, the cylinder on the workbench tooling is removed and replaced with the cylinder to be machined. The entire system also has rough block supply lines and blanking lines, fully automatic work. The running speed of the horizontal axis is 2 m/s, and the running speed of the vertical axis is 1 m/s.
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Figure 1 and Figure 2 are the robots on the job site and the photos of the parts to be captured. The overall length of the horizontal movement axis is up to 50 meters and the SP300 type linear motion unit is used. Servo motor equipped with reducer as a drive, using rack and pinion drive. Because the weight of the shell is large, it is not suitable to adopt a single-up and down motion axis hand claw structure. In order to guarantee the 14-second unloading cycle, double Z-axis and two-handed claws are used. The two Z-axis models are the AP200. They move horizontally along with the X-axis, but they can be individually moved vertically. If you want to know the specific technical data of SP300 and AP200, please contact Shenyang Rhine Electrical and Mechanical Co., Ltd.
Fig. 3 is a robotic photograph of an automatic loading and unloading robot for a lightweight engine housing. The total length of the complete set of robots reached 25 meters, and the four machine tools were used for loading and unloading. The H-type double-Z-axis two-hand claw structure was also used. Because of its light weight, the AP160 is selected on the Z axis. In terms of mechanical strength, there is a large margin in handling capacity, driving ability, and moment of inertia ratio, ensuring the robot's rigidity and strength, smooth operation at high and low speeds, and no rattle during acceleration and deceleration. And crawling and so on. Since the structure and working process of the two robots are almost identical, some major parts are introduced.
Robot gripper:
Due to the special uneven surface shape of the engine block, a large-stroke pneumatic two-finger gripper is used. When the claw is closed, the fingers can hook the grooves on both sides of the engine block, increasing the friction coefficient, ensuring that the bar can be gripped and moved smoothly, and also ensuring its azimuth accuracy. By hooking the engine block through the grooves on both sides, there is no slippage during gripping.
There is a grip-in position sensor on the gripper, and there is no shell sensor in the gripper open-position sensor and in the gripper. Ensure the reliability of grabbing and dropping parts. At the same time, the hand-clamping device has a gas-off protection mechanism to ensure power-off. When the air is cut off, the cylinder can be held for a period of time to prevent the cylinder from being suddenly dropped from the claw.
Control System:
The control systems of the two engine housing loading and unloading robot systems are Siemens CNC systems, Siemens servo motors, and Twist Caterpillar's precision planetary gearheads. The entire control system is equipped with functions such as automatic operation, manual operation, teaching operation, diagnostic function, and single-step operation. It is not only highly reliable, but also easy to tune and program. With sensors from Germany, there are sensors in some key locations to ensure that no movement occurs and collisions occur. The whole set of movements uses strict sensor-dependent signals for movement. Some movements can only be achieved with sensor signals, and some movements can be interlocked to ensure absolute safety and long-term reliable operation.
Automatic injection pump
Since the loading and unloading robots must operate at high speed, and work efficiently for a long time day and night, the sliders on the horizontal and vertical shafts and the rack and pinion must be periodically dosing oil. In this way, the robot can ensure high speed, low noise and long-term operation.
Safety protection channel
The horizontal and vertical axes of the loading and unloading robot move at high speed over a long period of time to quickly grab the parts that have just been machined. The cutting fluid is on the housing at this time. It will splash around without protection. The safety protection channel is a U-shaped steel plate that is installed below the X axis and below the Z axis. The safety protection channel only moves up and down the gripper above the machine table, grabs the blank, and places a window on the shell to ensure that the Z axis and the gripper can only move up and down in a specific position. This will not only prevent the splash of cutting fluid, collect and guide the cutting fluid, but also protect the machine tool from the damage caused by the robot's misoperation and parts falling off.
Inspection and maintenance access
In order to ensure that the loading and unloading robot can work stably and reliably for a long period of time, it is necessary to periodically check the protection and maintenance of the robot. The horizontal axis of motion of the robot truss and the upper door is usually very high, and the highest end of the vertical axis may reach 5 meters. For the maintenance plan, a maintenance and repair channel with guardrails is installed behind the robotic truss, which is almost the same length as the robot, about 1 meter wide. So that maintenance personnel can walk on it. In order to facilitate maintenance personnel, the upper and lower ends are usually equipped with upper and lower ladders.
Loading and unloading work process
When we want to load and unload a machine tool, we can use a Z-axis and grippers to grab raw rough material. The other Z axis and the paws we have are in idle state. The entire robot is waiting for the machine signal state. . After the manipulator receives the machine door open position signal, the free hand of the manipulator moves to the top of the processed cylinder, and descends and grabs the processed cylinder. It then quickly rises above the airport gate and moves a small distance to make another sharp Z-axis drop and place the blank bar onto the workbench's tooling. The Z axis of the empty gripper quickly rises to the outside of the machine guard and informs the machine to close the door and begin machining. The entire bar is removed, the new blank cylinder and the gripper move out of the machine guard over less than 14 seconds. This completes the blanking and feeding process. Then the newly removed cylinder is placed on the next station for processing in the next process or transferred to the blank. This completes the complete loading and unloading process of a machine tool. Because a robot feeds multiple machines at the same time, the entire loading and unloading process for any machine can not exceed 30 seconds.
Second, summary and outlook
The above case is just two kinds of engine shell loading and unloading robots produced by DMT Co., Ltd., a partner of Shenyang Rheinland Electromechanical Co., Ltd., for Hyundai Motors of Korea. DMT also provides crankshaft and gearbox automatic loading and unloading robots for Hyundai and Kia. DMT provides loading and unloading, high-speed handling, and automated production lines for Doosan Machine Tools, Samsung Heavy Industries, GM Daewoo, Posco, Renault Samsung, and Dalink Electric. Samsung custom-designed a 3 ton display robot at a high speed of 2 seconds per second to run smoothly at a design speed and beat-free for one year. DMT has defeated almost all European and Japanese competitors in South Korea, occupying almost all important users' handling and loading and unloading robot projects. DMT has become the sole supplier of robots to several large companies such as Hyundai Motors and Kia Motors and their suppliers. DMT's Mr. Zhao said when training at Shenyang Rheinhard & Mechatronics Co., Ltd., “If our robot fails for half an hour in a few years, it is catastrophic for manufacturers, and we must be able to operate with zero failure for many years.” This sentence deeply shocked all employees of Rheinhardt Electromechanics. From this sentence we understood why Samsung's display screens and mobile phones can make the best in the world. Shenyang Rhine Electrical and Mechanical Co., Ltd. and German companies in close cooperation, not only for the sale of their products, mainly to learn them very harsh and serious, meticulous, and wholeheartedly become the world's best fighting spirit. Under the influence of Germany Neugart, BergerLahr, Korea DMT and other companies, Rheinhardt is committed to doing a good job with Cartesian robots. Shenyang Baige Robot Co., Ltd. is determined to produce many years of trouble-free rectangular coordinate robot products. Its stable, reliable, high-quality, and high-reliability are our goals. Robots are our business. Today we can provide users with a variety of transport palletizing, demolition, special welding (intersecting lines), grinding and polishing, grinding and deburring, chamfering, spot-gluing robots, small automated production lines and various robots for loading and unloading. For detailed information and communication, please contact us.
