Robotic flexible laser cutting instead of five-axis machine tools, absolutely!
The application of robotic flexible laser cutting in the automotive industry is becoming more and more common, which is inextricably linked to the development of laser technology and the improvement of robot precision trajectory control technology.
Robotic flexible laser cutting in a variety of ways, can be made into a single robot cutting platform, but also can be combined into a flexible processing line. The workpiece involved is mainly two different types of parts: one is the metal parts through the extrusion or stretching of the formation of 3D body structure parts and cover parts, including thermoformed parts; the other is a tubular metal structure parts, including exhaust pipes, cross beams and so on. Covering parts are traditionally produced by opening the mold stamping, followed by punching die and edge cutting die and other processes; thermoformed parts and tubes through the expensive five-axis laser cutting machine tools to complete. Because of the high cost of equipment, so only certain joint venture brands of automobile manufacturers have the ability to purchase imported five-axis machine tools.
Under the new situation, the needs of car users are becoming diversified and personalized, more and more new models emerge. Most of the car appeared gradually batch shrinkage trend, because some car manufacturers can not predict and guarantee the future sales of a particular model and stable production, so began to try low-cost robotic laser flexible cutting equipment or production line. This trend began in the automotive spare parts market, and continues to expand and popularize to the field of construction machinery, passenger vehicles, agricultural vehicles, electric vehicles and so on.
Laser cutting robots for the automotive industry
The automotive industry uses a lot of industrial robots, but the application in the field of laser cutting is very little, the problem exists at three levels. First, the automotive industry robot application is mainly concentrated in the low precision requirements of spot welding, arc welding, spraying, handling, etc., but laser cutting often requires high positional accuracy, and small circle and other small trajectory accuracy has high requirements; on the other hand, depending on the robot`s `efficiency, the general robot of each axis of the joints of the motion control speed is relatively slow, and at the same time, the robot arm is too heavy weight is not suitable for high-speed movement; third aspect is the The third aspect is the rigidity of the robot, poor rigidity of the robot jitter, robot trajectory is poor, and the robot deformation is great, can not accurately reach the workpiece number of molds need to be cut in the precise location. Therefore, the traditional automotive industry popular robot in the laser cutting by the customer question is understandable.
With a hundred years of experience in precision machinery and high-speed motion control St?ubli, the widest design field is the automotive industry, for the needs of the automotive industry, St?ubli in the laser aspects of the implementation of the RX160L inverted mode gantry structure robot flexible cutting system solutions, the system from the following aspects of breakthroughs:
Large-size robots with wide-format. The use of RX160L robot, 2.05?m spherical work area, cutting table width can reach 3?m, more than the expensive five-axis machine tool table width, the general size of automotive parts are in the RX160L inverted robot work area, some of the large workpiece can also be realized by moving the platform.
The arm is lightweight and rigid. St?ubli adopts the whole cast tubular structure to maintain rigidity; the material selection of less deformation but light weight aviation cast aluminum. the RX160L robot arm weight is only 250?kg, while the European system of the same arm of the robot to more than 400?kg, very unsuitable for robotic flexible laser cutting needs.
Robot mechanical accuracy differences. In addition to the rigidity of the robot mechanical precision differences, the most important difference lies in the mechanical transmission error, and mechanical transmission error is mainly reflected in the reducer. St?ubli adopts a unique patented speed reduction system, JCS, and the company has successfully applied more than one hundred years of experience in precision machinery to robots. This is why St?ubli is recognized by its customers for small hole cutting.
Successful transfer of 5-axis machine tool technology to robots
Offline programming technology and automatic generation of fixtures and jigs is one of the key technologies that has been promoted in the machine tool industry, and the development and successful application of these technologies in the field of robotics has led to a seamless link between robotic flexible laser cutting solutions and automotive industry applications.
The traditional robot programming is online tutorial programming, time-consuming and laborious, especially automotive coverings or fittings, need to cut are complex spatial curves, tutorials can not meet the design requirements.
St?ubli uses ROBOTMASTER software for offline programming of the ST?UBLI RX160L robot, which allows for the virtualization of the real cutting environment, including the robot, the laser cutting head, the workpiece and the fixture. The software quickly sets up and optimizes the best robot cutting attitude and intelligently prompts the system if it interferes or is out of range.
The offline software also automates precision fixturing. The PEPS Offline software is a customized offline programming software for robot laser cutting, developed specifically for the world's most sophisticated robot, ST?UBLI. It can provide automatic generation of fixtures and fixtures program, the user can be based on the workpiece three-dimensional digital model to select the fixture and can be fine-tuned.
Many integrators use generic robots that are not suitable for laser cutting, which is inefficient and ineffective, affecting the perception of automotive users in this area and negating robotic solutions. St?ubli, on the other hand, believes that good integrators will choose high-precision robots and integrate them into sophisticated system structures, evolving from basic to different robotic flexible cutting solutions based on different user products, which can be combined between single, dual, or multiple robots and the number of platforms.
Cutting efficiency is determined by program and experience
The integration ability of the integrator determines the final cutting effect and efficiency. JENOPTIK, St?ubli's laser application integrator, uses St?ubli's custom-developed TX90 laser cutting robot, a customized lightweight cutting head, and proprietary BIM (Beam-In-Motion) technology. The machine is capable of small-hole positioning accuracy of ?50?m and linear speeds of >12?m/min. For higher product volumes, JENOPTIK can offer dual-machine equipment or multi-robot solutions.
Some of the local technical strength of the laser cutting system integrators are also constantly improving the robot laser cutting awareness and continue to improve integration capabilities. Shenzhen Daqi Laser in the automotive industry in the application of robotic laser cutting solutions on the choice of St?ubli's robotic products, this system contains two mobile work platform, the robot in the two platforms to switch between the workpiece, non-working mobile platform to launch the material. The customer of this system is a bus manufacturing plant, the person in charge of equipment at the plant is very satisfied with this, not only the cutting effect is good, but also the efficiency is high, and the dual-station platform will not waste the loading time, and at present this customer has already purchased nearly ten sets of St?ubli robotic equipment. And they plan to redesign a stamping line, with a robot flexible production line to replace a mold stamping line, including the process of material transfer is also done through the robot, the line's robot dosage may be as high as dozens of units. The use of robots not only saves costs, but also improves the level of automation, the entire process does not require human intervention.
Various domestic car factory to initially accept the robot flexible laser cutting method will take some time, the integrator needs to further improve the robot integration capabilities, improve system accuracy and speed, especially the system's safety, stability, so that the automotive industry users gradually began to batch adopt the robot flexible laser cutting solutions.
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