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Job Shoppin with Fanuc Robodrill and CRX Robot arm?? thoughts??

markwiggs

Plastic
Joined
May 10, 2021
So im in the market for a new machine and am really interested in the idea of a automation and Fanuc robodrills and the associated robots specifically the CRX series look cool, but are they pratical? I feel like you would spend all day programming them? and Fanuc controls are notouris for being clunky old school interfaces..
So my question is does this ACTUALLY work in a job shop where you can program and run 10 - 20 parts at a time? or is this more for large production runs like 500+ love to haer from you all that have actually run them? thanks...
 
We have three Productive Robotics OB7-STRETCH arms with HandE grippers and Kurt air actuated vises.

Our general rule is run of >100 PCs with high likelihood of repeating will be considered for automation, below that it's probably not worth it for us. Most of our automated runs are 300-1000pcs. Your fixturing and process needs to be stable. Robot will run for days without issues as long as that's figured out.

Those arms have probably the easiest gui for programming.

We also had to develop a way to reliably push multiple parts down at the same time and locate them in fixture. Some examples below. Those are not optimized. This is for a single part but we usually run two at a time now by loading spring pins into outer push bar positions and using pneumatic actuators on both sides of the manifold to locate along X.

https://youtu.be/2l3GutFLOIE
https://youtu.be/lpSYR2QPyTE

They are in cobot mode so pretty slow. They are capable of fast speeds but you need to provide guarding or light curtains. Adding those arms made a big difference as far as being able to keep production up. Nothing like ending up with nine machines all needing short 2nd op with only two people to handle that. A person can load a lot faster but if he is loading another machine this one is sitting idle. In a long run I think it averages out about the same but I don't have any hard numbers.

Alex

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
 
So im in the market for a new machine and am really interested in the idea of a automation and Fanuc robodrills and the associated robots specifically the CRX series look cool, but are they pratical? I feel like you would spend all day programming them? and Fanuc controls are notouris for being clunky old school interfaces..
So my question is does this ACTUALLY work in a job shop where you can program and run 10 - 20 parts at a time? or is this more for large production runs like 500+ love to haer from you all that have actually run them? thanks...

I design/integrate a lot of systems with fanuc robots, but not for machining applications. The robots can be programmed quickly from the teach pendant for simple applications, pick and place etc. Interfacing to a PLC can get a bit more complicated. I use roboguide simulation tools to generate more complex tool paths that would be difficult to do by hand.
For machining, I would have to have a lot of repeat work/high volume to justify the extra complexity/cost. The fanuc robots are crazy reliable workhorses that protect themselves from horrible crashes. We have some 20+ years old spraying molten aluminum multiple shift/day that just wont die...
 








 
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