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TASK
Production of bevel pinions for drive trains of construction equipment. In full automation mode the cell has to be able to produce parts with a cycle time of 3 minutes. Included in the cell are two shaping, one deburring and a washing machine. A further difficulty is to handle 200 different parts with a maximum setup time between products of under ten minutes. Finally the available height of the building is limited so that a special solution has to be found to be able to load the machines from the top side.
SOLUTION
Instead of an expensive gantry with telescopic axis the solution consists of a roboFlex providing an innovative and space saving installation with a high performance throughput. Set up time is reduced by an intelligent gripping system and an operator friendly control system allowing easy teaching of new products to be manufactured.
SCOPE OF SUPPLY
GÜDEL supplies a roboFlex RF-4 on a 14m beam equiped with an innovative high performance gripping system. Because one of the shaping machines cannot be loaded directly by the roboFlex, a double head feeder is part of GÜDEL's scope of delivery. It allows loading the machine with a tolerance as little as 0.02mm.
RESULT
Thanks to the overhead linear axis a main customer benefit is a cell with satisfying safety and ergonomical conditions. Maintenance tasks on the machining centres are carried out easier than it would be possible with a floor mounted handling system. Setup time for a new product is under ten minutes as required by the customer. The cost per part is reduced by 7% while the manpower is down to 50% compared to the situation before automation. This was all possible with an investment 7% lower than that of a comparable gantry solution. Finally an expected Return on Investment of 28% is achieved.
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