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Making Robots Work Harder and Safer

Crash protection reduces loss and downtime

During the training phase of most robotic applications a robot will encounter a few collisions with other objects. However, in production, manually- or semi-manually-loaded work pieces can become misaligned, leading to a “crash” that, even if minor, results in significant tooling damage and lost production time. A crash protection device from ATI Industrial Automation, Apex, NC, can absorb the impact and reset itself with minimal downtime.

During a robot training application, the robot arm is “walked” through its operations to map out the desired path and function. Most of the time this procedure is performed manually and minor crashes often occur. After a crash, the robot is directed to remove the tooling from the crash situation and the protector will automatically reset at that point, allowing the programmer to continue training with minimal downtime. In operation, the crash protection device is adjusted to support typical loads experienced by the robot arm in all directions: angular, compression and torsional. When the preset limits are exceeded, the compliant device absorbs the impact energy through a pneumatic chamber and redirects the energy to reset the device. Once a robot is “trained,” it will repeat the desired operation as quickly and as accurately as needed, typically within 0.001-in.

National Manufacturing Co., Inc., Chatam, N.J., produces deep-drawn enclosures for the medical, electronic and aerospace/satellite industries. According to project engineer Daniel DiAndrea, “A few years ago we purchased an industrial robot to perform the loading/unloading operations on a 10-station, 45-ton press. Before installing the ATI crash protection device, we experienced a major crash that resulted in significant robot damage. While waiting for the replacement parts from Japan, we were performing the loading/unloading tasks by hand — obviously a time-consuming process when you consider an average part run of 250,000 pieces. Since installing the crash protector we have realized such a significant cost savings on downtime and repairs that we have made the protector a standard part on all of our automated machinery.”

—RM