Hello all, I'm new here so I hope this is the right place to post my question. We have a process which has two fanuc robots, robot 1 takes pins from a tray and hands them to robot two, one at a time. robot two then puts the pin into a deburring process, not letting go of it, then passes over a demag plate and into an ultrasonic wash, then puts it into a flush and airblast and then hands it back to robot 1, the whole process is done with robot 2 holding the pin. The problem I have is I want to be able to wash the pin for longer without increasing the cycle time. The solution would be to put a drop off station into the wash tank, so the pin could be sitting in the wash for most of the cycle time of the machine and exchanged with the next one to be processed. we only have a single gripper on robot 2 so we would need two locations to be taught in the wash which would need to alternate with every cycle. Is there anyone on here who could look at the program and help me with the mod I require? I have a litle knowlage of the software but this is way beyond me.
Thanks
program mod help..
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carlsburg -
July 6, 2016 at 1:13 PM -
Thread is marked as Resolved.
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Sounds feasible. Teaching the wash positions shouldn't be difficult - perhaps as simple as an offset. Keeping track of which wash station has a pin might be a li'l tricky. Do you plan to have part present sensors? Do you plan to have a sequence that initially loads the washer and another that empties it? Your #2 robot gripper has sensors to know if it has a part or not?
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carlsburg
Welcome to the robot forum
Lets see
R1.................Picks pin
.................Place the pin in R2 tool
later
R1.................Picks the pin from R2 tool
.................Place the pinR2................Picks the pin from R1 tool
................deburring
................demag plate
................ultrasonic wash
................airblast
................wash tank
.................Place the pin in R1 toolI have to say this. From what I am sitting the work for these robots is totally unbalanced. I guess is too late to change anything now like placing R1 on a different location where it can help R2 or relocate the stations to maximize cycle time.
carlsburg, I don't think little knowledge of the software is the problem, hits is more a mechanical design problem, anyway, lets think positive.
1) Get the cycle time for every station ?
2) R2, does it have to hold the pin all the time ?
3) Obviously you asked this question but , why not have a double gripper ? is it money or space ? -
Thanks for the input, Is there any way i can upload a video on here, this will help clarify things. The robots are unbalanced but this is because we have to keep hold of the pin as is has very sensitive features and we can only drop it off into a specially designed wash station in the ultrasonic bath. we do have a sensor on robot 1 gripper, we can’t put a sensor in the ultrasonic tank so we need to alternate between the stations.
Currently from start up, robot 1 = R1 robot 2 = R2
R1 picks pin from 180 piece tray,
R1 delivers pin to R2
R2 grips pin and holds it in the deburr. R1 collects the next pin from the input tray and waits at the exchange point,
after 8 seconds of deburring R2 moves the pin over the demag plate,
then R2 holds the pin in the ultrasonic wash tank,
then moves the pin and holds it in a water flush,
then holds it at the air blast,
then R2 hands the pin into R1,
R1 then switches grippers and presents the next pin to R2
R2 starts the cycle again, R1 returns the first pin to the tray.The mod I want to make will require another pin to be in the loop so I can drop off a pin in the ultrasonic wash and collect the next pin from R1, so we will need to tell R1 to go and pick another pin at the start otherwise it will be waiting to collect.
I will see if I can upload a small video to youtube and post a link.
Thanks -
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I guess it's an engineer/programmer's curse to want to change things. The sonic tank would seem to be an excellent place for a pin hand-off... but R1 would need to complete the wash station and air blast, and it probably doesn't have the "spin" that R2 does (and it would be picking up the pin from the other end).
Where would the drop-off stations be? Would R2 still spin the pin in the ultrasonic tank, or would the pin just sit there for awhile? -
R1 can't collect from the ultrasonic wash because we have a vac gripper in R1, the pins need to be kept in the correct orientation as we have a very critical feature called a seat , they are seat up in the trays feeding the machine, we use a vacumme to collect from the tray then when we collect it with R2 we use a 3 finger gripper to hold on a non critical feature with the seat exposed to the deburring wheel, this is why we hold onto it for all the operations, the only time we can drop it off is in the wash, so we want to drop a newly deburred pin into a fixture and collect the pin that was left by the previous cycle. all with R2
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The actual motion shouldn't be difficult, it's the part tracking I'd be concerned about. Hopefully, your motion program is neatly modularized, so another subroutine (or two) can take care of washer drop-off/pickup. Similarly, a startup/shutdown sequence can load/empty the tank (as opposed to a part transfer).
Keeping track of which wash station is full/empty and whether R2 has successfully gripped/released the pin might be a concern. A register (or two) can keep track of wash station status under normal circumstances, but I suspect trying to put 2 pins in the same station would not be good.