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Berco News 6 THE FIRST AUTOMATION OF A LINK PROCESSING-LINE AT CASTELFRANCO VENETO Having installed a robot for the loading and unloading of links, the automation of the 5-station MINGANTI 808 boring machine was concluded at the Castelfranco Veneto factory. This automation follows the upgrading carried out in 1998 by the technical studio BIEFFE. The upgrade involved drilling and spot-facing heads as well as nut seat cylindrical machining, all of which are now carried out by numerical control and which have allowed insert bits to be used, with the consequent reduction in machining cycle times. This has however required the automation of the loading and unloading operations, as these were carried out manually and consequently limited the potential cycle time. In the final configuration the machine has been included in a complete station with an automatically loaded miller-induction hardening line. In fact even previously the loading of the TREVISAN miller had already been carried out automatically, as well as that of the EMA induction hardening machine positioned before the MINGANTI boring machine. In this way a double advantage has been obtained, of both increasing production and lightening the load of the operator in charge of the manual loading operations, which were very heavy due to the type of pieces processed. This line in fact includes the largest boring machine for link machining present at Berco, and the pieces machined are used for the classes up to FD50 FIAT, D9 CATERPILLAR and D375 KOMATSU. The reactions from the processing operators have also been very positive: Mr Luisetto, in charge of the line, has noted to this regard: “This automation can boast having greatly improved the working conditions by reducing the physical effort that the operator previously had to make. It also provides the operators with the chance of a more gratifying professional growth”. The study for this automation was carried out entirely by BERCO, while the drives and transport was carried out by the company COME ENGINEERING. The robots used are ABB 6400, with a maximum load of 120 kg. The main problem for this type of application was the cleaning of the machinery. This because the links to be machined are vertically positioned on the boring machine table, while the spindles
7 Berco News Previous page: Robot for loading and unloading track link machining center work on a horizontal axis. This makes the removal of the chips produced particularly difficult. For this reason a cleaning system had to be designed using water at high pressure (approx. 60 bars). It was also necessary to equip the robot with a sensor to check the correct positioning of the links; once the position of the milled surface has been read, a part of the robot programme calculates its height and parallelism with respect to the boring machine table. In this way, any chip on the reference fingers can be found. A particular effort was made during the design phase of the whole station View of general layout for heat-treat and machining of track links Robot for loading and unloading track link milling center to avoid the need for any modification to the machines to be automated, so that the cost of this intervention was reduced to a minimum. For the purpose the particular drives for the milling machine were designed to avoid the need to modify the machine so that more space could be dedicated to the insertion of the links on the equipment, while the lack of space around the boring machine was made up for by a careful study of the robot movements during loading and unloading. Seeing the results obtained in terms of both quality and quantity, we are now thinking seriously about automating a second processing line. Dr Eng. Nicola Battistin Dear Readers, you too can partecipate in writing our Company Newsletter. Please forward your suggestions, articles and pictures to us at: BERCO NEWS Berco 44034 Copparo (FE) Tel. 0532/864111 Fax 0532/864259 e-mail: a.sbordoni@berco.com
Page 1 and 2: Quarterly House Organ Editor: Anna
Page 4 and 5: Berco News 4 TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATI
Page 8 and 9: Berco News 8 BERCO AND THE APPLICAT
Page 10 and 11: Berco News 10 A NEW UNDERCARRIAGE F
Page 12: BAUMA 2001 Munich, 2-8 april 2001 W

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