Robotic Integration- Fanuc

[cincy k]

Hi All,

 

I have a few machining centers that I would like to potentially tend with a robot. They are currently under utilized but some of our work lends itself to running a first article during the day and then feeding the machine at night via a standardized pallet. As I begin to adventure towards integrating something what are some of the major do's and don'ts of the road.

 

Is this something that I could potentially do myself with a used robot, looking at something like the Fanuc R2000 series. I am fairly versed in mechanical design and some programming language, but not much. I lack significantly on the electrical side of things. Are there resources or people out there that may be willing to be a go to with questions? All my machines are Fanuc controlled, so I'm hoping that helps.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks,

Troy k

[cincy k]

I'm thinking more and more about doing this myself. Am I nuts for going this route? It's something I've always been fascinated with and would love to learn. 

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Productivity Inc can help you set that up.

[Colin Gilchrist]

I'm thinking more and more about doing this myself. Am I nuts for going this route? It's something I've always been fascinated with and would love to learn. 

 

Are you nuts? No, but this isn't a project I'd take on without doing some research. I spent about 6 months at Boeing playing around with a Fanuc 2000ia, robot arm. You had the option of using the "teach" pendant to program the motion, or an offline programming software like Robotmaster, Octopus, or CENIT.

 

It really depends on exactly what you want to "do" with the arm. For machine tending (loading/unloading) a machine, you either need to design the process to be highly repeatable, or you would need some kind of Vision System so that the end effector can "see" the part, and grip it properly. That is going to be your biggest hurdle.

 

Also, you'll need to get pretty deep into understanding the optional input/output channels on your machine, so that you can have the robot "listen to" the machine signals, and provide "input" to the machine as well. For example, to unload a part from a machine, you've got to move the arm into position, and "grip" the part. Then the robot needs to signal the machine to "release" the clamp. Once the clamp is open, then the arm can move the finished part to the "Complete" bin. (placing the parts on a table is a whole other issue). Then the arm needs to find and clamp onto the next piece of "raw stock", and then maneuver it into position. Once the part is ready to be clamped, the arm needs to send a signal to the machine to engage the clamps, and finally the arm must "unclamp" itself from the stock, and retract it's way out of the machine envelope. Once the arm is clear, it would send a "ready to cut" signal to the machine.

[T_MALENA]

Just a little FYI...all CNC people are nuts.

 

So on to the Robot stuff.  In my little world here, I cant believe we didn't get robots sooner!  We had 2 installed 2 years ago & now I'm debugging our 4th Fanuc and  about to have our 5th installed (end of March).  That doesn't count the Automated servo type systems we've also installed.

 

Keep in mind the cost of the Robot is probably less than 1/2 of your total install cost. The biggest % could easily be EOAT.  Unless you have in house robotic programmers/integraters I'd go with a hired service. There has to be someone close to you...Mason Oh is one of Fanuc's facilities. 

[cincy k]

Thanks all! 

 

A couple items- End of arm tooling will be DEAD simple. Its a fork that slides into two grooves on the pallet, similar to an Erowa Robot Easy for PC210. We are using a standardized pallet, that we are making, so the robot will literally be doing the same thing all the time. The pallet will have two Schunk retention knobs on it and will mate with a Schunk NSE plus 100-75 clamping unit. We have a prototype chuck made right now. Wish I could post a pic but haven't figured out how. You can see it on my Instagram page. https://www.instagram.com/tkmsusa/  

 

The communications with the machine is where I think I may struggle. It seems pretty simple in theory. Machine tells robot it's ready to open door and unclamps pallet, robot opens door, grabs pallet, lifts and retracts, puts pallet back in proper storage area, grabs new pallet, places it in machine and tells machine to clamp pallet and robot closes door. There is an extra port on the Schunk zero point that they call "monitoring". if you put air to the port and it reads 1 bar the chuck is closed, if it reads 2 bar the chuck is closed. I can get pallet clamp confirmation this way. 

 

I have spoken with a few integrators. I have found one that I really would like to work with but can't seem to get pricing from on what I'm looking to do. I want to be involved with the integrator to learn as much as possible and do things like building the racking and EOAT, maybe this is a turn off to them. There is another local integrator that sells used robots as well as does new integration that may be a good fit to just help in the areas that we need it. They seemed very willing to setup a used machine on their floor and teach us how to use it. 

 

I know with the used market you have to be worried about software when needing support directly from Fanuc. I need to have a few more discussions with the used place to see how all that works.  

[cincy k]

Just a little FYI...all CNC people are nuts.

 

So on to the Robot stuff.  In my little world here, I cant believe we didn't get robots sooner!  We had 2 installed 2 years ago & now I'm debugging our 4th Fanuc and  about to have our 5th installed (end of March).  That doesn't count the Automated servo type systems we've also installed.

 

Keep in mind the cost of the Robot is probably less than 1/2 of your total install cost. The biggest % could easily be EOAT.  Unless you have in house robotic programmers/integraters I'd go with a hired service. There has to be someone close to you...Mason Oh is one of Fanuc's facilities. 

Who did you use for the first two installs?

[justchips]

all you really need is something to tell the machine to cycle again. un clamp is an m code at the end of program.  if you have a servo door you can use a prox. switch that can call the robot into machine when the door goes up. clamp is an m code at the beginning of the program. the only thing the robot needs to know to do a pallet pick is when the door opens. and all the machine needs to know is when the door closes

[cincy k]

Has anyone here worked with RobotWorx out of Marion, Ohio?