ITM Award 2010
17/05/2010
ROBOT WITH A CERTAIN FEELING
The innovative project of 123 Automation Engineering & Development was nominated for the Best Practice Award of Industrie Technisch Management.
The article in Industrie Technisch Management of May 2010 Thanks to their experience in robot applications and metal handling, 123 Automation Engineering & Development developed a computerised machine for deburring work pieces. The young company provided the FANUC robot with compliance to accommodate the inconsistent component form that is inherent with deburring applications.
When machining of metal or plastic work pieces it is inevitable that burrs will occur and in order to achieve high accuracy and a polished finish it is always necessary to carry out additional processes such as grinding to get achieve the desired result. To date this sharpening has been carried out manually as the nature and location of the burr is always different and removing them requires a certain touch. This last aspect is immediately the crucial innovation in the machine that 123 Automation developed.
The machine consist of a robot which takes a work piece from the storage warehouse and presents it i at different angles to the rotating grinding tool until the burrs have disappeared. Both the pressing and the detection are done by a force sensor in the robot arm. This sensor is available as an option on the FANUC robot and is used to detect collisions. 123 Automation makes a more detailed analysis of the measured force so it can ‘feel’ where the burrs are and when they are removed.