TENDING TO EXCEL WITH A ROBOT 'HANDSHAKE'

摘要

A COLLABORATION BETWEEN FANUC AND SICK HAS PIONEERED NEW SAFETY INTEGRATION FOR ROBOT MACHINE TENDING THAT POINTS THE WAY TOWARDS SIMPLER, MORE COST-EFFECTIVE AND ADAPTABLE SOLUTIONS IN FUTURE, WRITES MARK HARRIES. Robots excel in heavy, repetitive and high-speed tasks, far surpassing humans in their repeatable, reliable performance. For this reason, the manual operation of machine tending - ubiquitous throughout manufacturing industry - has become a prime candidate for robotic automation. Machine tending, typically to load and unload, for example, CNC milling and turning centres, presses or moulding machines, is a common application that is becoming increasingly difficult for manufacturers to staff economically. Using robots instead offers far-reaching opportunities to develop Industry 4.0, 24/7, batch-driven processes that are more flexible and adaptable in future. Currently, much of the discussion around machine tending is around the new smaller-scale collaborative or co-operative robot types. However, its more likely that industrial robots with their robust, heavyweight performance will remain the star automators in machine tending, especially as they have added potential to link process stages together and combine with other operations, such as vision quality inspection, to drive production to the next level. But as these opportunities develop, so does the need for robot, machine and other devices like operator controls, door interlocks or laser scanners, to talk to each other seamlessly. At the same time the consequent system must fully integrate with safety circuits to meet required industrial standards. That's simple enough to say, but in practice, it can be difficult to achieve.