Turn a 50-year-old machine into "Industry 4.0" and enjoy a return on investment of less than a year
The application is seemingly simple – start a punching machine, all you have to do is insert the part exactly into the jig, and after the presser punctures, flip it out with air pressure. When we started, we were told that the Sawyer is slow, takes 16 seconds to cycle, and a hard worker does it in 10 seconds. We smiled. We’ve already learned that hardworking workers work at a different pace after 2-3 hours of work, and Cobots don’t go out for a cigar and don’t look at WhatsApp. After a few days it was already clear that it works about 3 times faster than a worker. And not that the employee can’t find what to do, on the contrary – the client has more work to do, so every vacant employee is sent to tasks with higher added value. That’s what they asked for, so at first we solved it as seen in the top clip – the first program, and what you see in the next clip is the station about two months later after quite a few additions and changes to the program.
If you’re asking what’s not trivial in this app, then you should know:
Duration:
- Regular Robots – These kinds of projects take a month – two months from the time the robot arrives in the country, and sometimes much more
- Our Sawyer – We usually have several units in the warehouse, and within a day or two of the order it arrives at the customer. In this example within half a day of deciding on the application at the station, Sawyer began to work on a regular basis (the main challenges were connecting the machine to the Cobot and preparing the first cartridge).
Project Lead:
- Regular Robots – The Robot Provider brings an employee retinue to match the Robot, and any subsequent change usually requires vendor involvement (and payment)
- Our Sawyer – We invested as part of the assimilation process two days into the customer worker training in learning the Cobot. The program has undergone a number of changes and upgrades initiated and by the client (adding 2 more cartridges, hand-reading to the employee to refill cartridges and in a situation where part of the template gets stuck, improving the trajectory of the arm)
Exact discount:
- Normal Robots – It’s very difficult to insert gigs (fixers) exactly why it’s so hard – because ordinary robots try to put the “bull” part in place, and then if there’s even a deviation of even 1 -2 mm, the part does not come into place.
- Humans – Don’t try to be accurate, they slide the part into place and “play” it until it gets to the right place in the fixture.
- Our Sawyer – Like people, he has a sensation, and can put the part close, and then slide it exactly into the fixture – you can see in the clip that it intentionally lays next to it, slides it into the groove, and then pushes with it’s finger until The end.
Activating the workspace:
- Standard Robots – To perform additional operations in the robot environment, controllers must be connected and programmed in scales charts. This lowers the cost of the project, and when there are problems some professionals need to solve the problem
- Our Sawyer – Sawyer has the ability to interface with machines / sensors / pistons / computers / or whatever. In this case, apart from moving his hand, he gives operating instructions to the machine, and controls the operation of an air pressure tube connected to his arm by which he flies the part after punching into a crate behind the machine.
Notice of cartridge finish, and return to regular work:
- Standard Robots – In the case of basic robotic technology, after the cartridge is emptied, the robot continues to work on a blank, and if a sensor array is connected through the control box, the robot can be stopped and restarted with the cartridge refilled. </ li>
- Our Sawyer – it simply feels like it can catch some, if it can’t try again, and then moves to the next cartridge, if all the cartridges are empty it swings its hand to the operator to come fill. The cartridges and the nicest part, after finishing the cartridge, the operator gives Sawyer “fun”, and the Sawyer who feels the slight push understand that the cartridges have been filled and he can return to work (see it nicely at the end of the second clip).
Make sure the template is empty:
- Normal Robots – An ordinary robot did not know if it could empty the template, and the customer would have to incorporate cameras or sensors to verify this – in this case it is problematic that the template is not well lit for the camera and there is no good photo angle, and also Problematic sensors put that part comes in on one side and goes out on the other.
- Our Sawyer – We debated whether to use the camera with the flash (which is an integral part of the Sawyer’s arm) or his ability to feel, in the end we implemented his sensing ability. Employees are forbidden for safety reasons, but the most natural thing is to push your finger and feel if there is a part in it, so that’s what we taught Sawyer to do. It puts its finger in and if there is no objection he realizes that everything is fine, if the finger encounters a part, it tries to flip it again with the air pressure and if it fails again, swings his hand to call the worker.
What happened next is also interesting. The Sawyer surprised everyone with his pace of work, and within a week of work planned for several weeks. Then it happened to it what happens to any good worker who finishes the job too quickly – send it to another task. The second task was fully designed and carried out by the factory staff without any involvement (we were not even aware of the station ), one can be impressed that the customer changed the type of gripper at all, built a cartridge with completely different logic, and created an elegant and very economical application – now Sawyer works 24 hours on the day.
Since then our Cobot skips between these two stations, and spends most of its hours in the second station, but when a first-position job accumulates, it goes to work on it for a few days. It has wheels, and one of the workers leads it from station to station, the gripper takes 2 minutes to replace, and raises an alternate plan for a few more seconds. Its unique vision system allows it to calibrate itself as soon as it returns to the station and task it already knows, even if it is not exactly returned to the point from which it was moved (no such thing in classical industrial robotics). It has been spending on these tasks for almost six months, and the client plans to train it for additional tasks.