Posted on

Why Weld With a Hanwha Cobot?

Hanwha cobot welding - working

In today’s industrial landscape, adding capacity to robotic welding processes is crucial to optimizing operations that can effectively manage and fulfill the uptick in consumer product variety – sometimes regardless of product volume. To gain the flexibility and capability needed for this, a growing number of manufacturers are implementing collaborative welding robots. A style of flexible automation that can be easily deployed or redeployed on demand, collaborative welding offers some attractive benefits to manufacturers such as:

Quick & Easy to Teach

Collaborative robots, like the Hanwha HCR-12, allow someone familiar with the welding process to hand guide the robot, manually moving the arm and torch through a program path to weld a part. This easy-to-use feature enables manufacturers to train someone unfamiliar with robotics how to use a robot in a matter of minutes, as opposed to hours or days.

Safe 

While it is true that a collaborative robot enables a human to safely work with or in close proximity to robots, manufacturers must take the proper precautions. There are already risks associated with any kind of welding including arc flash, weld spatter, hot parts, sharp wire and working with a high current of electricity, regardless of the robot or human manipulation. Keep in mind, collaborative welding is only as safe as all precautions taken while using the hanwha cobot in a welding environment. For this reason, personal protective equipment (PPE) and training is still required, as determined by a thorough risk assessment of the robot, end-of-arm tooling, the workpiece and the robot work area.

Easy to Relocate

Unlike some larger and heavier industrial welding robots that weigh around 150 kg, collaborative robots such as the HCR-12 – weighing in at just 53 kg.

Cobots can even be reinstalled elsewhere within the factory as production needs change. An ideal use for a robot of this nature would be a factory or job shop that already has welding tables set up for humans, where the collaborative robot could easily be wheeled up to help supplement manual labor.

Accommodates High-Mix, Low-Volume Production

The fact that these robots are easy to teach makes them well-suited for high-mix, low-volume production runs. Instead of spending an hour or more programming for a part that only requires a quantity of 50, the person programming an easy-to-use collaborative robot may only need a few minutes before the robot is up and running, allowing for fast changeover. The use of robotic welding for fast-paced production in low quantities also helps to reduce cycle time and maintain quality, while possibly freeing a human worker to perform other value-added tasks or complex welds that sometimes are more suited for a skilled welder rather than a robot.

Lowers Cost per Part

If manual workers are redeployed to other operational duties such as custom welding, there is the opportunity to lower cost per part. If a collaborative robot is running simultaneously while a skilled welder is working on another task, there is great potential to get the average dollar per part down over time, especially after return on investment (ROI) has been achieved.

Welds Longer Continuous Seams

Quality in today’s marketplace is essential, especially for high-mix, low-volume production runs. The use of collaborative welding robots enables the ability to create a longer, continuous weld seam. A skilled welder can only weld about a two-foot seam in a continuous motion, while a cobot can make up to a four-foot seam. This is helpful with long parts, as there can be fewer starts and stops, producing a higher quality weld. This type of part would also typically require a larger welding cell with a lot of dedicated floor space, where a collaborative robot can be pushed into place at the part’s current location.

Other Collaborative Welding Robot Applications

A huge advantage of collaborative robots is the versatility that they can provide. Aside from welding, cobots can also be used for other applications in a welding environment such as loading/unloading a spot ped welder, loading/unloading a standard welding workcell, part and weld seam inspection, post-weld part placing into containers, and part picking and placing.

Is a Collaborative Robot Right for Your Welding Application?

If you’re interested in learning more about adding capacity to your robotic welding processes, Contact us for more information and demos! 

 

 

Source: https://www.motoman.com/en-us/about/y-blog/collaborative-welding-benefits

Posted on

What’s Your Best Workcell for Cobot Integration?

Workcell for Cobot Integration

Three approaches for determining the best ROI.

Many manufacturers are seeking to benefit their operations by integrating cobots into one or more of their manufacturing workcells. Manufacturing management wants assurance that the cobot-integrated workcell will quickly deliver a high return on investment. You’ll deliver a better ROI if you choose a workcell that will deliver the greatest benefit from cobot integration. But how do you identify that “best” workcell?

Let’s look at advice from experts, starting from quick but less accurate approaches to more time-consuming but more accurate approaches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “Past Experience” Approach

In a recent survey (from TechSolve, Inc.), manufacturers said that cobots have worked successfully with the following workcell types: part loading and unloading, cleaning of parts, pick-place-orient-pack parts, packaging, welding, assembly, inspection, and any repetitive operation. The same survey revealed that workcell tasks that are boring and/or dangerous should be given high consideration for robot automation.

In another survey from TechSolve, the perceived percent benefit to a group of manufacturers performing a broad set of cobot-integrated manufacturing workcell tasks is shown below.

 

 

 

 

Small to medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) can make use of the past-experience approach to decide what workcell to select for their first or next cobot system implementation.

The “Complexity-Impact Quadrant” Approach

A step-up in complexity has SMMs identifying candidate workcells exhibiting the highest levels of both “high impact” and “simplicity” (from Robotiq, Inc.).

Application criteria for simplicity consists of elements such as the workcell task, manipulation requirements, process consistency, part variation, precision, integration, cycle time, and cost. Application criteria for impact consists of elements such as volume, part value, health & safety, work-in-process, production, cycle time, and quality. The skill-level of the current workforce at each stage in the candidate workcell is also factored in to determine the suitability of each candidate workcell for cobot integration. SMMs finally select workcells with the highest levels of both impact and simplicity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “Key Elements Weighting” Approach

In this approach, an SMM estimates the importance of each one of a comprehensive set of key elements to be considered when integrating a cobot-based system into one or more candidate workcells. The categories of elements suggested by experts consist of performance, usage, workforce, financial, and miscellaneous. This approach is thorough, and therefore might take a significant amount of time for an expert, or a team of experts, to complete. Elements considered of lesser importance can be trimmed in pursuit of timeliness.

To make a good assessment for a work cell, manufacturing experts need a reasonably accurate estimate of weights for each key element in each candidate workcell, based on that element’s relative importance, allowing for both negative and positive weightings. Then all weights can be summed up to get a final score for each candidate workcell.

Obviously, the workcell with the highest scores, will be the workcell that will most likely to produce the best return on investment. Manufacturers/integrators might ignore several of these elements and add other elements, as they see fit.

Here are those key elements in the various categories:

A: Key elements for performance, e.g., padding on cobot arms and eye safety might still be required with a cobot, along with safety measures such as fencing/light curtains, which can also result in low operating speeds or multiple stops, if humans are detected in certain parts of the workcell.

  • Safety for and desirability from humans to work at the workcell
  • Number of operations per unit time
  • Available shop floor footprint for the robotic system
  • Reach of the cobot adequate to the task or tasks
  • Accuracy of cobot arm motion throughout the entire reach of the cobot
  • Repeatability of cobot arm motion throughout the entire reach of the cobot, and its relevance to the task
  • Maximum payloads allowed per cobot compared to human accuracy/precision (including humans with exoskeletons) per the required payloads
  • Cobot arm speed adequacy to the task
  • Cobot system longevity
  • Chosen end effector (gripper) grasping and moving effectiveness for given part types or material
  • Cobot works for many types of use cases (e.g., material handling, machine tending)
  • Minimum and maximum part feature size resolution of cobot gripper and tools satisfies the requirements of the workcell tasks
  • Ability to adapt to widely and frequently varying production requirements, i.e., system agility

 

B: Key elements for usage

  • System setup, cobot integration, reconfiguration, programming, reprogramming, programming complexity, hardware changeovers, relocation, testing, maintenance, handling multi-product changeovers and mixes, and use (programming or reprogramming is typically given high importance)
  • Cost of learning and integrating one or more computing languages, computer programs, and hardware interfaces (e.g., PLCs, HDMI, USB, and software languages), with the understanding that cobot technology is relatively simple to integrate and program
  • Human decision-making requirements in the workcell
  • If vision sensors are required on or near the cobot: requirements and cost of vision system setup and reprogramming
  • Duration of downtime prior to successful workcell operation
  • The proposed cobot system automates more workcells than one
  • Robust with respect to damage, e.g., are the parts under test expensive and fragile?
  • Key elements for workforce
  • Technical suitability of manual operators for maximum desired production volumes for the candidate workcell
  • Danger to workers of the candidate workcell operation
  • Boredom of workers for the candidate workcell operation
  • Resistance of workers to learn programming languages
  • Resistance of maintenance workers to learn robot system maintenance
  • Ability of maintenance workers to learn to work with the cobot
  • Availability of local maintenance/service experts
  • Availability of cobot system integrators
  • Distributers and resellers are often motivated to help and perform demos
  • Type and level of skill gaps in current workforce (higher skills imply greater benefit with cobots)
  • Workers’ union resistance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

D: Key elements for financial

  • Lifecycle costs of cobot with human compared to just a human worker
  • SMM’s budgeted amount for the whole cobot integration project compared to the prorated cost of the total cobot system project
  • SMM’s level of risk tolerance
  • Time to full ROI. When generating the ROI, make sure it is done holistically, which may imply that using cobots may not the best solution, or may reveal that a manual solution or non-robotic automation solution will be the faster, better, cheaper, and safer solution. Common experience reported by seasoned robot system integrators are that ROI can typically be reached within 14 months and SMMs should budget around 3 times the price of the cobot system to cover integration costs, however, some MEP experts have experienced as little as 1/2 to 1 times the cost of cobot for development, fixturing, end effectors and deployment
  • Availability and variety of leasing options and payment plans
  • Product bundles availability
  • Availability of application-specific packages for the cobot system

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

E: Miscellaneous key elements

  • Study what the SMM’s business is, study each workcell and start with a simpler workcell operations since there is a significant non-technical danger in picking the “wrong” workcell
  • Use “right and ready” assessment document from South Dakota MEP
  • Favor starting with a simpler workcell operations since there is a significant non-technical danger in picking the “wrong” workcell
  • Part of a community of users/researchers
  • Number and magnitude of process changes in each workcell
  • Number and magnitude of product changes in each workcell
  • Ensure that enough monies are available to be allocated before deploying the cobot
  • Cobot system has been “mainstreamed” or widely used
  • Availability of tooling and accessory options
  • Scalability requirements to support automation growth over the long term
  • Cost of delaying the move to cobot technology
  • Compliant to standards

SMMs could also choose a subset of all the candidate workcells, using the “past experience” approach, and then apply the more complex approaches (“complexity-impact quadrant” and “key elements weighting”) to that smaller set of candidate workcells. This approach would save time and still discern the workcell(s) that will return a good ROI.

Source: https://www.industryweek.com/technology-and-iiot/article/21146581/whats-your-best-workcell-for-cobot-integration