Page 16 - Metallforming Magazine December 2020

Cobots Keeps Stamping Presses Fed
The cobots tending presses at PMI have no problem grip- ping, picking and placing their assigned parts, produced from 0.054-in.-thick aluminum stock and measuring 22 by 40 in., and destined for residential stand-by electrical generators.
Simplified Solution to Press Tending
“We have some large welding robots, but we’ve never tried to set them up for tending presses and moving parts,” Larson explains. “Given that, along with a serious labor shortage, we decided to give cobots a try.”
A Hirebotics team visited PMI and targeted a three-press operation used to form relatively flat parts, without frequent die changes or other factors that might necessitate excessive pro- gramming, as an ideal initial cobot application. The firm installed two Uni- versal Robots (UR) UR10 cobots in Jan- uary 2019 to serve two mechanical presses 250- and 300-ton capacities operating side-by-side in the work area.
PMI’s own install requirements were minimal, consisting mainly of running a compressed-air line, installing base- plates to precisely locate the cobots, and purchasing part-feed conveyors. No problem with electrical, as the cobots run off of 110-V current, and
Note the permanent pre-positioned cobot baseplates, which ease the die-change process as the cobots quickly can be removed for press-bed access and pinned and bolted back to their correct positions after tooling install.
14 MetalForming/December 2020
www.metalformingmagazine.com
though the cobots
are safe enough to
operate in proxim-
ity with humans, PMI has installed floor-based sensors to protect person- nel not from the cobots, but from parts as they transfer to and from the press- es. The parts themselves, 0.054-in.- thick aluminum stock and measuring 22 by 40 in., are destined for residential stand-by electrical generators.
cobots and tooling were shipped back to us,” Larson explains, noting that, through information gained from ear- lier meetings, PMI was able to fabricate and install the cobot base plates in the correct locations ahead of time. “We already had the base plates anchored in when the cobots arrived, which shortened the ramp-up time.”
Presses, Cobots, Conveyors Intertwined
As mentioned, the cobots tend two presses in this operation, with the ini- tial forming press tended by hand.
“An operator tends the first coil-fed press, which stamps the initial blanks,” Larson says. “The operator stacks those blanks on a pallet for transfer to the next press, where the operator then forms the part and places the formed part onto a conveyor for pickup by the first cobot. We would use a cobot for
Within three days of installation onset, the cobots were tending the presses full-time.
Through a business model designed to ease cobot integration in manufac- turing environments, PMI rents the UR cobots on an hourly basis, allowing PMI to focus on core competencies in stamping and fabricating as opposed to material and part handling, and redi- rect valuable associates to other tasks.
“Initially, we shipped parts to Hire- botics, which developed pick-and- place cobot tooling (included in the hourly cobot rental), and then the two