AUTOMATION & INDUSTRY 4.0 IN ACTION
The addition of a robotic machine-tending system from CNC
Robotics ( www.is.gd/xanuto ) will allow precision engineers and
similar manufacturing organisations to boost their production, the
company says.
“One of our customers has tripled production by adding one of our
machine-tending systems alongside a Mazak Integrex machine during
the lockdown period,” reports Jason Barker, chief technology officer at
CNC Robotics. “The company works nine-and-a-half-hour shifts and
expects each machine to work for around eight of those hours. After
adding the robot, production can be maintained for up to 24 hours a
day and across the weekends.”
A typical package from CNC Robotics includes the robot, its
enclosure and a purpose-designed fixture to load and remove the
parts, together with the programming and installation. The resulting
increase in productivity means that the systems can repay the
investment in a few months or even a few weeks.
The increased production can necessitate additional investments
in swarf-handling equipment, such as a high capacity swarf conveyor
to remove all the excess material that will be produced and a swarf
compactor to compress the chips down to a more manageable
volume when machines are running over the weekend.
Many manufacturers are looking into the use of cobots alongside
their machine tools, but Barker believes that an industrial robot is a
more cost-effective choice in the long term. “The cost of a cobot isn’t
much less than the price of a system based on an industrial robot.
Industrial robots are more robust, an important consideration for
companies whose staff have no previous experience in operating this
type of equipment. They should also be faster, which could be
important when making parts with short cycle times.”
Industrial robots can be just as quick and easy to install as cobots,
too, he adds: “At one customer site, we completed the testing on a
Friday afternoon and left the new system to run over that night,”
remembers Barker. “By the end of that weekend, more than 300
components had been produced, all to the high standards expected at
the customer.”
In addition, industrial robots are usually easier to repurpose, if they
aren’t required by a particular machine tool any longer. CNC Robotics
sets up its systems so that they can be removed from the equipment
in around five minutes, either to be used on another machine or in a
completely different area of automation.
Manual gauging processes were incapable of delivering the
throughput necessary to achieve a high-volume part manufacturing
target at Olympus NDT in Quebec, but the installation of a
Renishaw ( www.is.gd/xaquje ) Equator inspection comparator has
changed that, boosting capacity and improving part quality and
reducing scrap.
A world-leading manufacturer of non-destructive testing (NDT)
instruments used in industrial applications taking in aerospace, power
generation, petrochemical, civil infrastructure, automotive and
consumer products, Olympus NDT makes a precision wedge
component to correctly align parts for NDT applications.
The demand for these wedges has grown rapidly in recent years,
as the Quebec plant supplies four Olympus sites across Canada and
the US. While the dedicated 5-axis CNC milling machine and loading
robot allowed production through the night and across weekend shifts,
dimensional post-production inspection of the wedges was creating an
unacceptable bottleneck and costly downtime.
A Renishaw Equator gauge equipped with Renishaw’s SP25M
3-axis analogue scanning probe can capture 1,000 data points per
second, enabling the measurement of position and form on each
wedge produced. Equator works as a comparator, validating each
production part against a master reference part. The master part is
measured first to generate a master data set. Then, each production
part is measured and compared with the master data set to verify that
Above: CNC
Robotics suggests
standard
industrial robots
are a better
option than
cobots
Industry & product news in brief Far right: Mills
CNC’s SYNERGI
25 standard cell is
aimed at making
automation easy
for SMEs
www.is.gd/fufovo
■ Businesses with creative ideas to boost the UK’s
manufacturing capabilities, including using robotics, AI and
augmented reality, are set to receive up to £300m of joint
government and industry funding. www.is.gd/ujucan
■ Metlase, a specialist in tooling, intelligent fixturing and
components, is launching a new range of ‘digital’ solutions
that will connect manufacturing processes and enable
easier, faster automation. www.is.gd/sopofi
■ Made Smarter has launched an innovative, streamlined
process to enable more SME manufacturers to speed up
their digital transformation. www.is.gd/oholuf
■ A new scheme to help manufacturers embrace the
digital revolution has been launched in the West Midlands,
with the aim of protecting thousands of ‘at risk’ jobs from
the impact of Covid-19. www.is.gd/vowife
■ Following the UK launch by Hurco at the end of 2019 of
a range of portable cobots (collaborative robots), the
company has set up a cell in its High Wycombe technical
centre to underline that machine tool tending can be
simply and inexpensively automated. www.is.gd/eyuyot
■ Read Machinery’s October article on how Hexagon
Manufacturing Intelligence is bringing automation to the
12 November 2020| www.machinery.co.uk | MachineryMagazine | @MachineryTweets
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