When you are in the process of industrial automation with robotics, it is important to realize that the characteristics of work cells should be considered in a different way. It would be a good idea to think “outside of the box”, if you will. The previous work methodologies on the production line may no longer be valid when robotics are in place. With the previous work cells the work station was a fixed position on the line with very specific tooling. Robotics opens the door to the idea of a mobile work cell in that it can be moved to a new position on the line or to another line, if required. The tooling is very flexible, limited only to the requirements of the currently running application. The traditional work station on the production line does not have a great deal of latitude in its work process in the area of speed and other capabilities. The robotics work station has a large variation of both these characteristics. The speed of the operation of a robotic is dependent on the application that is running the device.
The automated work cell can apply its abilities any where it is required. The traditional production line work station is single-task oriented without variation at all, while the robot created by industrial automation can perform a multitude of tasks. Usually the changeover of a traditional station is done once a year or very infrequently. The work station of industrial automation is changed very often based on the requirements of the application that guide it. The focus of the traditional work station is for the production or work on a single family of parts, it is very limited. There are no such restrictions on the robotic workstation, the variation is very wide, just dependent on the application. The traditional workstation has to go through an arduous set up or “training” in order to become productive with the other stations in the production line. Robotics are programmed with instructions that are created away from the factory area, making this device much more efficient to set them up.
There are certain manufacturing tasks that are usually done by specialized machines that are solely dedicated to that task alone. These include routing, drilling, rough milling, jigless fixturing, and friction stir welding. Other tasks like loading heavy objects on pallets, transporting, deburring, dispensing, and water jet cutting are done by people, but sometimes not very well. Industrial automation can take on these tasks very readily to eliminate the increased expense of heavy dedicated equipment to do these chores.
Consider the flexible manufacturing operation that is designed to produce several different types of circuit boards. This type of production line can have several robotic work stations produced by industrial automation that work together to produce all the different circuit boards that a company might sell on one manufacturing line. A circuit board would be placed on the moving line by a robot. Each circuit board has a bar code on it that will tell the production process what its part number is. As the part moves down the belt toward the first robotic work station, a bar code reader will read the part number from the bar code label that is on the circuit board. Just before the board gets to the work station it passes through a beam of a light sensor. This indicator causes the cell controller to request the part number of this circuit board from the bar code reader. The bar code reader sends the part number to the cell controller. For each type circuit board that can be processed on the line there is a program in the cell controller. Once the cell controller has received the part number from the bar code reader, it will start the appropriate program to process the circuit board that has just arrived at he given work station. As the circuit board continues down the production line to other work stations, the cell controller will send instructions to each work station in a similar fashion. The instructions, of course, are particular just to the work station that has received the moving circuit board.
This is a simple illustration of how robotics created by industrial automation can supply the flexibility that is needed in a production environment. Programs are stored in the memory of the cell controller for each type of circuit board. There can be further variation in the work that is done on any given board. You can see how flexible robotic manufacturing creates a widely variable production operation.
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