rollerman13
Plastic
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2017
Good Morning Guys,
I very much enjoy reading through this forum for all sorts of information regarding manufacturing. It is such a great resource and I want to thank everyone that contributes for their help in creating such a great resource to the manufacturing world.
I oversee the manufacturing and engineering at a small company - roughly 40 employees - and I have been recently reading up on automation in high mix, low volume type operations. Obviously, these can be tricky situations in which to leverage automation.
My background is in mechanical engineering - I have been out of school and working at this company for 6 years now so I am by no means a seasoned veteran, but wouldn't consider myself a green newbie either with respect to our niche of manufacturing. Our niche involves 95% of our work done on lathes, we do very little milling, and the milling work we do is extremely basic - think keyways on shafts, and wrench flats.
With that said, I will be spending a portion of my time in the next few months researching the viability of implementing robotics with one of our CNC lathes for production. This would be our first attempt at implementation. The parts we would make in this process are all turned from Hot Rolled Steel - mainly mild carbon. And they range from 3" diameter to 8" diameter stock size. Their lengths can range from a couple inches to let's say 40". If you're familiar with this finish of steel it is neither terribly round, straight, or finished at the nominal size (it is generally slightly larger). There is no repeatability with respect to the order in which these sizes need to be machined. We are a custom shop and today's size parts will differ from tomorrow's. I've attached a picture of our Round Stock lineup just for clarity. These are obviously cut before being loaded into the CNC Lathes.
What I'm wondering is if you guys could provide some thoughts into what means we may be able to manipulate these parts with certain types of end-effectors? What types of end-effectors might be best suited for a situation where the first part may be machined from a 3.5" diameter 14" long Rnd, while the next part may be 7.25" diameter by 25" long? Obviously the big picture of this operation has MANY moving parts and will involve a lot of work. We are absolutely willing to call in the professionals for the integration, however, I believe that a solid internal understanding of the process must be gained before moving down that path.
My initial instincts are to keep it simple with a 2 axis gantry style loading system that remains centered along the spindle axis. I haven't figured out a plan to stage the material prior to the picking up the parts and loading them. These parts can get very heavy, over 500 lbs. I intend to use the 80/20 rule on this project as frequently as possible as it may just not be feasible to implement certain heavy and long parts.
A search of the forum and online has definitely helped my to understand automation and robotics, I am still definitely very green in this subject (I wish I would've concentrated much more in this arena in school), but I have yet to find a similar setup. I am certain they are out there, but I also understand the value of keeping the best kept secrets as, well, secrets...
Any thoughts or pointers would be of great appreciation. Of course I'm willing to provide more details of our situation as needed; I just wanted to keep this intro (relatively) brief.
Regards,
Garrett
I very much enjoy reading through this forum for all sorts of information regarding manufacturing. It is such a great resource and I want to thank everyone that contributes for their help in creating such a great resource to the manufacturing world.
I oversee the manufacturing and engineering at a small company - roughly 40 employees - and I have been recently reading up on automation in high mix, low volume type operations. Obviously, these can be tricky situations in which to leverage automation.
My background is in mechanical engineering - I have been out of school and working at this company for 6 years now so I am by no means a seasoned veteran, but wouldn't consider myself a green newbie either with respect to our niche of manufacturing. Our niche involves 95% of our work done on lathes, we do very little milling, and the milling work we do is extremely basic - think keyways on shafts, and wrench flats.
With that said, I will be spending a portion of my time in the next few months researching the viability of implementing robotics with one of our CNC lathes for production. This would be our first attempt at implementation. The parts we would make in this process are all turned from Hot Rolled Steel - mainly mild carbon. And they range from 3" diameter to 8" diameter stock size. Their lengths can range from a couple inches to let's say 40". If you're familiar with this finish of steel it is neither terribly round, straight, or finished at the nominal size (it is generally slightly larger). There is no repeatability with respect to the order in which these sizes need to be machined. We are a custom shop and today's size parts will differ from tomorrow's. I've attached a picture of our Round Stock lineup just for clarity. These are obviously cut before being loaded into the CNC Lathes.
What I'm wondering is if you guys could provide some thoughts into what means we may be able to manipulate these parts with certain types of end-effectors? What types of end-effectors might be best suited for a situation where the first part may be machined from a 3.5" diameter 14" long Rnd, while the next part may be 7.25" diameter by 25" long? Obviously the big picture of this operation has MANY moving parts and will involve a lot of work. We are absolutely willing to call in the professionals for the integration, however, I believe that a solid internal understanding of the process must be gained before moving down that path.
My initial instincts are to keep it simple with a 2 axis gantry style loading system that remains centered along the spindle axis. I haven't figured out a plan to stage the material prior to the picking up the parts and loading them. These parts can get very heavy, over 500 lbs. I intend to use the 80/20 rule on this project as frequently as possible as it may just not be feasible to implement certain heavy and long parts.
A search of the forum and online has definitely helped my to understand automation and robotics, I am still definitely very green in this subject (I wish I would've concentrated much more in this arena in school), but I have yet to find a similar setup. I am certain they are out there, but I also understand the value of keeping the best kept secrets as, well, secrets...
Any thoughts or pointers would be of great appreciation. Of course I'm willing to provide more details of our situation as needed; I just wanted to keep this intro (relatively) brief.
Regards,
Garrett