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Miniature Movers
When handling small parts, robots can provide flexibility, repeatability, speed
The job shop sign says: “You want quick,
cheap and top quality? Pick two.” Said less
bluntly, every manufacturing operation involves
compromises.
The handling and assembly of small parts is
no exception. The most basic approach, moving
the parts manually with human fingers and
tweezers, requires minimal capital investment
but produces slow and inconsistent results. Automating
a process increases speed and consistency,
but it also requires planning, choice and
investment.
Choosing an automation method requires
juggling the elements of the manufacturing
speed-cost-quality equation. One approach to
automation is custom designing and building a
material handling system specific to the process
at hand. These so-called “hard” automation arrangements
can be engineered and fine-tuned to
maximize efficiency. However, if the parts being
handled change, or the process is updated, the
dedicated tooling must be replaced.
According to Jay Hallberg, regional sales manager
for Epson Robots, Carson, Calif., robotic
technologies can be a productive alternative. If
there is no variety and no expected engineering
changes, hard automation is fine, he said. “But
what you are doing is spending a lot of money
for hard tooling. And if anything changes, so
does a lot of tooling.”
A robotic automation system, however, can
facilitate changes. “You are buying flexibility,”
he said. “With a robot, it could be a matter of a
5-minute program change and it’s done.” And
if a process is eliminated entirely, software and
ancillary tooling changes can enable the robots
to be redeployed.
According to Mike Cicco, director of material
handling for Fanuc Robotics America Inc.,
Rochester Hills, Mich., a robot is a flexible tool.
The robot comes with a programmable controller.
After the program is written, the end user or
a robotic-systems integrator can develop end-ofarm-tooling
to grip the item to be moved, and
write a custom code to make the robot move
as desired.
Robot-programming software is generally
proprietary to the robot maker, but actual programming
methods are standard.
By Bill Kennedy, Contributing Editor
Fanuc Robotics
With parallel-link, or delta, robots, the end effector,
or tool, is linked to the motive power via parallel
links, or beams. This M-1iA robot from Fanuc has a
load capacity of 0.5 kg and provides repeatability
of ±20µm.
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