Robotec
Injection molding handling under time pressure
Robots are ideally suited to complex handling and production processes. In combination with modern vision systems, they can also carry out demanding assembly operations or quality checks in the system cycle. A visit on site.
Demmould is a medium-sized supplier to the automotive industry that required an automated robotic solution for plastic coating at one end of metal guide sleeves. This was developed by Robotec Solutions. The company specializes in turnkey, installed and validated production solutions with robot handling, camera-supported quality control and all other necessary peripherals and is a certified partner of manufacturers such as Fanuc, Stäubli, Omron, Siemens and the camera manufacturer Cognex.
'Robot 2' brings four finished overmolded sleeves to the cross slide of the camera station.
© RobotecThe cylindrical guide sleeves are around 100 mm long and have a diameter of around 15 mm over most of their length. Their narrow end is precision-machined and has a circumferential bead. At the other end, the sleeve is widened to around twice the diameter. The narrow end of the sleeve is overmoulded at Demmould in a quadruple mould with an asymmetrically shaped plastic jacket.
The camera station with still unequipped mandrels of the cross slide. The silver cylinder under the large lens contains the special optics developed in-house for 360° shots.
© RobotecIn the first step, the solution required by Robotec comprises the oriented feeding of the cores delivered as bulk material. They are separated and oriented using a vibrating bowl. They are then gripped piece by piece by the 'Fanuc robot 1' and placed on four mandrels. From there, 'Robot 2' picks them up using its double quadruple gripper. It then moves with these four sleeves in front of the open mold of an injection molding machine, where it first picks up four fully overmolded sleeves and removes their sprues at the same time. He then swivels around and pushes the four new sleeves into the mold. In the next step, he places the overmolded sleeves on the mandrels of a transport carriage, which guides them one after the other under the special camera of the optical quality control system. Meanwhile, the next injection cycle begins. The entire production cycle must not take longer than 60 seconds, and the mold opening time is just 15 seconds.
Time-critical optical quality control
The author: Klaus Vollrath is the owner of the editorial office www.b2dcomm.ch in Aarwangen, Switzerland.
© RobotecThe next and most demanding process step is the optical 360° inspection using a camera and lighting system. The camera has an optical system developed by Robotec itself with a special beam path so that a single photo is sufficient for quality control. The images are evaluated using AI software that has been trained by Robotec in advance using a predefined selection of good/bad samples. In addition to checking the overmolded area, this optical inspection also ensures that no overmolding has occurred at the top or bottom edge of the plastic jacket. The camera reports IO and NOK results to 'robot 1' as the carriage moves on, which then transports the overmolded sleeves either to an output box or to the reject container. In the meantime, the pick-up mandrels of the transfer station are loaded with the next blanks. The program for the two robots runs on their own controller, with one acting as master and the other as slave. Both robots monitor their work areas with a view to avoiding collisions with each other and with the separate handling system of the injection molding machine. The entire line with its numerous individual functions is operated via a central screen with graphical user guidance.
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