Robotic grinding application
Our customer manufactures hinges for plastic doors. Main parts are zinc-aluminum castings, powder coated according to end-users’ requirements. To achieve best paint quality, surface has to be ground.
Our system uses 3 infeed trays to feed the cell with parts. Trays were designed to accept all part variants. The robot uses a combined multi side gripper-multi part finger solution to grip all 3 parts. One of the parts has a very sensitive curved surface which requires stable pressure while grinding.
A belt grinder has been implemented with a belt specially designed for materials like zinc-aluminium alloy. This belt has great wear resistance, but it changes the thickness over the lifetime. We added a numeric wheel to the controller where the user can manually select the wear level and the robot compensates by applying more force.
This robot cell uses combined outfeed solutions: two parts are placed on outfeed conveyor (earlier there was a passive slide), the third part is placed directly into a machine for drilling and thread cutting.
Features:
- 3 different parts, all together 6 part variants
- multi side – multi function gripper (inside, outside gripping with feedback)
- automatic part variant identification system
- advanced dual channel safety system with automatic gate locking
- NACHI SA 166 robot with NACHI AR controller
- manual belt wear compensation
- tray based infeed
- direct machine loading + outfeed conveyor
- Cycle time per part: ~30-40 sec
Facts:
- Customer: T-DOTT Kft.
- Project duration: ~3 months
- Robot type: NACHI SA 166
- Controller type: NACHI AR
- Gripper: Schunk + custom design with Festo pneumatics
- PLC system: OMRON
- Safety system: OMRON
- Grinding machine: GRIT FEIN
- Technologies used: advanced NACHI programming, 3D CAD, CNC machining