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Learn more about robotic polishing and polished force control tools!

Release time:2021-07-05Read:102

There are a lot of flash and burr on the surface of the casting blank, which not only affects the appearance of the casting, but also seriously affects the product performance and service life of the casting. Aiming at the engine cylinder block and cylinder head and other large-scale and complex-cavity castings, an intelligent grinding workstation for engine castings has been designed, and independent intellectual property machine vision technology and information technology have been developed, and the application has been verified. Through the effective integration of robot operation and casting process and tooling, the product production efficiency has been increased by more than 20%, the qualified production rate has reached more than 97%, the labor cost has been reduced by more than 2O%, the dust and noise pollution in the cleaning and grinding site has been significantly improved, and the application requirements for the grinding robot in the casting cleaning and grinding link have been met.

China is a major country in the casting industry. The output of cast iron accounts for more than 70% of the total output of castings. In 2020, the total output of cast iron in China reached 51.95 million tons, an increase of 6.6% year-on-year. The cleaning of castings is an indispensable key process in casting production. In the complex blank casting industry, such as large engine cylinders, the cleaning process is still at the level of hand-held grinding wheels, pneumatic hammers, flat shovels and other tools. At present, the cleaning of castings is mainly manual, but the "dirty, messy and poor" situation in the production site seriously affects the health of workers. The trend of replacing machines with people in the cleaning and polishing of castings is imminent. In order to better solve the problem of low mechanization and automation in the cleaning and polishment of castings, the research is based on the automatic polishing and automation technology, and the existing casting technology is optimized, to a certain extent, to improve the cleaning technology of cast steel, improve the operation of casting polishing, and improve the production efficiency of enterprises.At present, in the production of all kinds of castings, the process of sand treatment, molding, core making and other processes have been gradually realized in automation and intelligence. However, the post-treatment technology of castings is still at the stage of manual operation. At the same time, the enterprise's pursuit of excellence in the surface quality of castings makes all kinds of effective castings polishing technology and related equipment become the necessary demand to promote the development of casting industry. Based on the lack of labor force and the development of industrialization, some castings cleaning equipment have been developed by drawing on the experience of mechanical processing equipment. After being put into use, they have achieved good results, which not only improve the production efficiency, but also reduce the labor intensity of operators, improve the working environment, but the equipment price is very expensive, difficult to popularize and widely used.

The robot grinding station has basically achieved a breakthrough in technical barriers and developed EDRC technology with independent intellectual property rights. Advanced technologies such as agile protection technology, 3D vision technology, information technology, and construction of intelligent automatic production lines for the automatic grinding and polishing of diesel engine body, hood casting seam, watering mouth and residue. The developed grinding workstation has been tested to meet the requirements of high precision and high efficiency of the grinding robot in the process of casting cleaning and grinding, and meets the operation requirements of large casting clearance automation, intensification, continuousization, intelligent and efficient production in complex curved surfaces.

 

1 Composition of robot grinding workstation

The robot grinding workstation is a design concept and design technology that uses the high rigidity, high efficiency and closed protection of the machine tool, combines the high flexible features of the robot, incorporates the visualization of data and information integration technology to form a brand new grinding unit. The robot grinding workstation consists of a safety protection system consisting of the workpiece positioning system, safety room and safety lock. The system is composed of cleaning and machining system, ground base, grinding robot system, cooling system, tool magazine system, hydraulic system, pneumatic system, software system and chip removal system, which is composed of electric spindle, knife handle and 3D laser scanner.

2 Visual positioning system

The visual positioning system mainly consists of the robot, the camera installed at the end of the robot and the camera on the camera bracket on the chain plate line, and the visual controller, which assists the robot to complete the positioning grab of the single cylinder lid on the chainplate line and the positioning grasp of the workpiece on the cache tray device.

The camera of the visual positioning system is mounted on a bracket above the chain plate line, and when the robot and controller receive a signal that the workpiece is in place, Guide the camera to take pictures, image processing and calculation in the visual controller, and send the calculation results to the robot, the robot according to the positioning results to grab the tool, and put it on the conveyor, a workflow is complete. When the robot and the visual controller receive a feed signal, the robot takes their respective cameras to the camera's photo point, and the visual control notifies the camera to collect pictures of the workpiece in the tray.

3 Data acquisition system

The main body of the grinding workstation control system consists of the robot, the electric main shaft, the dryer, the water cooling system, the hydraulic system, the tool library and a set of industrial control machines. The system forms a layered network structure through PROFINET, and at the same time configures laser correction functions, checks casting position and size, and adjusts and optimizes the polishing robot's polishing trajectory to improve the polish accuracy.

In addition to basic data monitoring, the platform supports more displays, such as relevant mapping of engine casting polishing production lines, including video content running in real time in the field, modeling simulation based on a digital twin architecture, and basic robot status monitoring. In the overall page, there are also current real-time field conditions and data, i.e., the specific real-time conditions of the current production line can be viewed, including production line status, completion status, equipment status, and so on. In the same way, the running state of the robot is also monitored. You can check the details of the robot spindle, the state in service, the energy consumption, the output, etc.

4 Application validation

The design concept and design technology of the machine tool's high rigidity, high efficiency and closed protection, combined with the high flexible characteristics of the robot, and integrated data visualization, information integration and automatic delivery technology to form an automated grinding production line layout.

The system mainly consists of robot grinding workstation, flat grinding unit, moving robot unit, visual positioning system, roller conveyor system, safety protection system, electrical control system and other parts. Sealed chambers are equipped for the treatment of dust and noise, and each grinding unit is equipped with an automatic shaving machine and a waste collection truck. The overall machining base is used, with good rigidity and high relative position accuracy, which greatly shortens the on-site installation and commissioning cycle. Each grinding unit is provided with an automatic supervisory control system for grinding process.

The production line is mainly used for cleaning and polishing the burrs on the internal and external surface area of the engine castings and the residual sprue and riser. Using 3D laser vision positioning technology, we achieve the intelligent positioning of casting polishing and the automatic and precise grasping of robots, which solves the problems of low artificial polishing efficiency, high labor intensity, and high safety hazards in the past, and improves product quality and efficiency. After the construction of the production line was completed and put into formal production, the equipment on the production line has been running normally and without fault, the production efficiency of the product has increased by more than 20%, the production conformity rate has reached more than 97%, and the labor cost has decreased by morethan 20%.

Some manufacturers also began to use robots to install electric or pneumatic tools for automated grinding, and compared with hand-held grinding, robot hair removal can effectively improve production efficiency. It reduces costs and improves product yield, but due to other factors such as the rigidity of the robot arm, the positioning error, and other factors, the use of robotic gripping electric and pneumatic tools to remove shears when handling irregular shears is easy to break the knife or damage the workpiece due to uneven strength.



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