Page 28 - MetalForming June 2009

Ford
Flies with Robotic
Press Tending
Replacing aging automation with new robotic technology yields lightning-fast press-to-press part transfer at this automotive OEM’s Woodhaven, MI, stamping plant.
BY LOUIS A. KREN, SENIOR EDITOR
Since 1964, Ford’s Woodhaven (MI) stamping plant has supplied the automaker’s assembly operations with doors, fenders, quarter panels, roofs, floor pans, hoods and body pan- els. In its 2.7 million sq. ft. nearly 1400 employees perform tandem-press as well as subassembly operations, with a bit of transfer-press work sprinkled in. Row after row of tandem lines, with working widths from 108 to 180 in., are tended in some cases via robots of varying vintage, ultimately churning out large parts for F-series pickups, Explorers and similar Ford products. Many of the lines utilize automation to load blanks directly from skids or pal- lets, and several employ robots to destack and load the first operation. A few lines still hand-load parts to the first operation while all feature manu- al end-of-line part racking.
Woodhaven owes its robot-rich envi- ronment to Ford’s longtime commit- ment to this type of automation. The
Ford replaced straight-path automation on Line 8 at Woodhaven with R-2000 six- axis robots located between presses. Production capacity doubled as a result.
26 METALFORMING / JUNE 2009
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company was one of the first adopters of robots for use in spot welding, and in 1990 became one of the first automak- ers to employ robots in press-to-press applications.
Replacing Aging Automation
Of course, older robots with dimin- ishing cycle times and outdated tech- nology must be replaced, and in the past two years, Ford has set about installing new-generation robots and controllers at Woodhaven.
“Although the lines were produc- tive, there was some downtime associ- ated with the aging robots,” explains Peter H. Stephan, program manager for stamping for Fanuc Robotics America, Inc., Rochester Hills, MI, which supplied much of the original and new robotics. “There was a general consensus that
replacing the robots could improve productivity on these lines by as much as 20 percent.”
Line 8 at Woodhaven, a 120-in. tan- dem setup fronted by a 1000-ton dual- action Danly draw press and backed by four 800-ton Danly presses, was part of that automation upgrade.
“On that line, with its old automa- tion and frequent breakdowns, if we yielded 200 parts/hr. we were walking in tall cotton,” says Randy Dively, an elec- trical controls engineer at the Ford stamping plant.
Straight-Path Automation Taxed Diesetting
The old automation, referred to as straight-path automation, consisted of an unloader that removed a part from one press and placed it on a shuttle