Robot Gripper for High-Mix, Low Volume Automation
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Why can't we automate high-mix, low volume production today even though the first industrial robot was installed in 1961? This presentation explains how we must change our mind to make this happen.
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Robot Gripper for High-Mix, Low Volume Automation
- 1. Universal Gripper for High Mix, Low Volume Robotic Handling Samuel Bouchard President, Robotiq
- 3. High Mix Automation Costs Low Mix High Mix Lots of : Changeovers New Product Introduction Production Cost (given volume, over given period of time) Robot production (Robots only) Manual production
- 4. High Mix Automation Costs Robot production ( including tooling +changeovers) Low Mix High Mix Lots of : Changeovers New Product Introduction Production Cost (given volume, over given period of time) Robot production (Robots only) Manual production
- 5. High Mix vs Automation Stay Manual ROI < 0 Not sure ROI > 0 Automate ROI >> 0 Robot production ( including tooling +changeovers) Low Mix High Mix Lots of : Changeovers New Product Introduction Production Cost (given volume, over given period of time) Manual production
- 7. Bill: Automation Engineer for ATV Mfg
- 10. Bill’s Idea
- 11. Bill’s Idea
- 12. Let’s do it!
- 13. Let’s do it! [ WATCH VIDEO ]
- 14. Robotic Hand Welding Glove
- 15. What About Precision? A B
- 16. What About Precision? VS
- 17. What About Precision? Gripper TCP Part Feature TCP
- 18. Bill’s Solution [ WATCH VIDEO ]
- 19. Bill Changed his Mindset “ Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” - A. Einstein
- 20. Bill Changed his Mindset Hard Automation Robotics Time
- 21. Bill Changed his Mindset Hard Fixtures Programmable Fixtures Time
- 22. High Mix Automation Costs Robot production Flexible fixture Robot production ( including tooling +changeovers) Low Mix High Mix Lots of : Changeovers New Product Introduction Production Cost (given volume, over given period of time) Manual production
- 24. Examples of Parts that can be Handled Brackets Studs Tubes and Pipes Irregular Irregular
- 25. Bringing the Solution to The Factory Floor 1. End Users with a Need / Requirement 3. Integration force with welding, vision expertise 2. Robotiq Adaptive Gripper and application support
- 27. What the Adaptive Gripper Can Enable High ROI in high mix automation is possible.
Notes de l'éditeur
- Hello Everyone, I am assuming that if you are here, you are interested in discussing approaches to automate high mix, low-volume productions. Productions that have frequent changeovers either or products w ith lots of different parts to be assembled and welded, just like what we see on the screen: stamped brackets, studs, etc. So you know that you need to automate using robots for all the usual good reasons: challenge of finding skilled labor, need to reduce cost, improve quality and consistency, etc. But, y ou’re concerned about custom fixtures and grippers… and you’re right considering the current mindset of having 1 gripper per part or a small family of parts, and one fixture per assembly. If you have hundreds of different parts and 10s of different products, the current approach simply does not work.
- Let’s look at the total cost of production as a function of the mix of products, over a fixed period of time and for a fixed total volume to illustrate why. If it was only the robot compared to the labour, that would make sense. Because you robot can be amortized over your total production.
- But it is not the case for tooling. Tooling cost can only be amortized on the production of a specific product. So if you consider the number of assembly, the dedicated fixture cost and the changeover costs, automation cost for high mix production skyrockets. And you also have at the back of your mind other things that you can’t exactly predict but you know will happen such as the cost of adapting to engineering changes and the cost of adding new parts or products.
- You are not alone in this situation. In fact, there are far more companies that produce high-mix than the opposite. There are far more fab shops and small medium companies than there are GMs out there. Still, robot people used to focus on the big guys in the past, where the return on investment with their usual tools was clear, the green on the graph. But this is changing because most of these low hanging fruits have been picked and they want to grow their business. This so true that I had a discussion with the people organising the Automate show in 2013 and that’s going to be their target: to attract to the show companies that don’t use or use very little robots. A lot of people in the robotic industry would like to solve your problem because it is an underserved market that represents a huge potential for them. But to do so, we need to change our mindset with respect to tooling, and that’s what we’ll discuss in this presentation.
- We are among those robot people that are working to make sense of automation in high-mix, low-volume settings. Robotiq is a privately funded company founded in 2008 with head office in Quebec City, Canada and representation in the US. We introduced the Adaptive Gripper in March 2011 at the Automate show in Chicago. This is the first industrial grade robotic hand on the market. We’re here now to introduce a new protective glove for welding, as well as on application on how it can be used on a robot a reprogrammable fixture. So we make robotic components, we’re not robot manufacturers or integrators. We have strategic alliances with people that make and integrate robots to provide complete solutions. Our goal is to make robotic components that simplify the life of manufacturing end-users. And what I mean by simplifying life is reducing production cost and improving production agility.
- To discuss high-mix automation, I’ll use the story of Bill, automation manager for an important recreational vehicle manufacturer. The pictures here show one of several robotic cells that he manages. On this one, he welds small parts on the central frame of the vehicle. These small parts are stamped brackets and pipes. There is a Ferry wheel with a human operator on one side and a welding robot on the other one. The operator is loading and unloading the fixture that hold all the parts being welded And the fixture is custom made for each assembly. Because they have several models and several types of vehicles, the fixture will have to be changed several times during the year. This is quite typical, right?
- This worked ok for a long time but now Bill is scratching his head. He has important problems and is stuck with the approach. Some products that his company make are successful. Nobody will complain, but he needs to increase production. To reduce inventory and reduce the risks of market fluctuation, management decided that they need to start doing mixed model manufacturing, which again makes total sense. And, of course, like everyone, he has to reduce production cost.
- But all of this is not an easy task: He has to deal with custom made fixtures for each vehicle model sub assembly. Cost and reaction time to engineering changes put him under unexpected pressure every so often. And he has also operator health issues from handling repetitive loads, heavy and hot parts.
- Bill saw this universal gripper a while ago and asked: “Can I buy one of these?” “ Sure Bill, anytime!” What do you want to do with it. So he explained. “I’ve got this cell on one line that is a real pain.” and he explained everything that we’ve just said: need to start mix model, would love to get rid of complex custom made fixtures, etc.
- “ I would use your gripper to position all the small parts with a robot while the other robot is welding.” “ I would just have to use a vision system to make sure I’m precise enough.” “ I have so many different parts, I think your gripper could grip them all.” “ There would still be a fixture, but a very simple one. And it could be used to ground the welding loop.” An then he wondered: “ Maybe I could even load the main part and unload the welded assembly with the same robot, that would be awesome.”
- I was very pleased with his contagious enthusiasm so the answer was “Bill, sure, let’s do it!” He brought some parts and we tested them with the gripper, we could handle all of them. That was fine. We know that the gripper itself is robust. The mechanical concept was created initially for space and nuclear applications where repair is not an option. The product was on a bench test for more than 3,5M cycles with no maintenance and was still ok. We put it in cold rooms, hot rooms, did load test hanging a hundred pounds from a finger.
- But what about having the gripper holding a part being welded? Would it still work under the high current, electric field, the spatters and all of this? Well, there’s nothing like trying it. So you see on the picture the test bench that we’ve used. The gripper was on a stand, holding a beam on which a welding robot would do several passes. And here is the result: [show destructive welding video, fingers on fire but still opening and closing http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150281815257124] I love this video. We sacrificed one gripper for science, trashed it under heavy weld and… it would catch on fire! But, as you see, it is still opening and closing. We were glad that the electronics, in the enclosed casing, would have no side effect from the welding. Communication was not lost, everything was still functional. On the mechanical side, things were not that pretty. The spatters would weld finger pins, degrade the gears etc. We had to come with something to protect the mechanics.
- The first idea that came was the one that won: “Let’s put a glove over this thing.” So after introducing the gripper here earlier this year at Automate, we are back at Fabtech to introduce the welding glove for the Adaptive Gripper and the application that it enables. This glove can be retrofitted on the gripper. It is made out of high temperature silicone. This is a material that is used to make pipe gaskets in foundries for instance. Great! So you have this hand-like gripper that can pick all the parts. It is now protected with a spatter proof glove. But hey, this thing is so adaptive, what about its repeatability? Because in our classic world of industrial robotics used to do jobs for low mix, high volume, we’ve always used the mechanical repeatability of grippers to make sure the parts would be precisely placed where they needed to. And this has to change. Let me give you an example in another field to explain.
- Have you all heard about the Google autonomous car? It drove several thousands of miles in California. Here’s what they have done so their car could go from point A to point B. They have invested tons of money to have highly repeatable tires, direction, braking, etc. So using this amazingly precise and expensive mechanics... The car got out of the driveway, turned EXACTLY 90 degrees left. Then drove EXACTLY 300 feet. Then turned EXACTLY 90 degrees right. Then drove EXACTLY 100 feet. Then again EXACTLY 90 degrees left and 200 feet. Oh, and then EXACTLY 40 degrees right. And, wow, that was be complex, followed exactly that round shaped street. To finally arrive at point B within the desired tolerance. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? So if Google used the traditional industrial robotics approach, that is exactly what they would have done. As you can imagine, using a sensor on the top of the was the way they went. By closing the control loop with the sensor, they could achieve precision and autonomy. And that is the mindset that we need to adopt in industrial robotics if we want to get serious about flexibility.
- What is the difference between the first industrial robot installed 50 years ago at GM and today’s robot? Of course today the mechanics is much better, more precise, faster, it is electric, not hydraulic. But the biggest difference is that the controller is much more powerful thanks to the evolution of electronics. So let’s use it. Let’s interface our robots with powerful tools like vision and force sensing that are mature technologies today.
- And you know what will happen with precision for our approach? It will be even better than if we would rely on the gripper repeatability. Because instead or relying on the gripper and grip repeatability, we will eliminate it from the equation. And you know, it’s not the robot nor the gripper that we want to place precisely, it’s the part! It’s that feature of the part that need to be a that position relative to this other feature on the central frame. Using vision, we are able to measure directly the position of the part, offset the robot trajectory and bring the part precisely enough for great a weld. And Bill is calling us again “Guys, have you started to do tests with the parts I’ve sent you?”
- Right Bill. Lets put the glove on the gripper, the gripper on a robot, connect this to a vision system and bring your solution to life! [complete welding video] So you see the positioner robot, the welding robot and the vision system. You still have the fixture, but a very simple one. For each part, their is a picking and placing position. The vision system measures the position and this information is used to offset the positioner robot trajectory accordingly. So, here is your assembly Bill, and thank you for being so forward thinking.
- I’m sure you’ve seen this definition for insanity before, right? Industrial robots are turning 50 years old this year. I’ve shown you the Unimate earlier. It was installed in 1961 at a GM plant. Still, we have not managed to apply robots to very high-mix, low-volume production. It might be time to try different approaches!
- Bill certainly does not want to go insane. So he knows he needs to change how he does things to get different results. He has changed his mindset about how high-mix production should be automated. The same way we’ve seen hard automation fading out to leave more place to robots
- We envision that dedicated tooling will gradually leave place to reprogrammable tooling.
- And the goal is illustrated here. We want to have automation solutions that can scale up with increased mix of production without having the costs go out of control. We want ways to automate that remain clearly advantageous financially compared to fully manual operations, even under high production mix. And one important aspect to make this possible is by replacing hard tooling by reprogrammable tooling.
- A key piece of hardware in the solution shown in the video is the Adaptive gripper It is shown here on the table. [Live DEMO, gripper software on the screen] Explanation of gripper This is an electric gripper with 3 articulated fingers. These fingers can adapt automatically to different shapes and sizes parts. It can do grips like a parallel jaw gripper would do. And it can also curl around large objects of irregular shape. It is also possible to move these two fingers side ways to pick smaller or larger parts. The gripper can be easily integrated on different robots. It supports the most common communication protocols like Ethernet IP, TCP/IP and Device NET among others. You send commands to the gripper such as open and close. You control the speed, force and finger position. The gripper sends feedback when a part is picked.
- As you saw in the video and on those pictures, it can handle a wide variety of shapes and sizes. From small to large, flat to round.
- Of course, the gripper is an enabler of the complete solution but it is only a part of the solution. We partner with integrators to bring this complete solution. Integrators can be external systems integrators, or people inside the company responsible for the integration. The video that you saw a technical validation that we did for Bill at CRVI. The CRVI is a non-for-profit industrial robotics lab that helps manufacturing companies wanting to use robots. They are neutral and willing to collaborate with systems integrator and manufacturers to share their knowledge on this application. They are at a 10 minutes drive from Robotiq. They great thing is that they have two of our grippers in a 4 robots welding cell. This hardware and our common expertises can be used for demonstrations with your parts. We can work with your internal team that do the integration or with your preferred system integrator. We also have other partnerships with robotics integrators in the US such as Motoman, Ellisson Technologies and Comau. These guys have used the gripper before and know how to work with it.
- This slide wraps up the different reasons why we make this product. Along the presentation, I’ve focused on the welding example as we are at Fabtech. But the gripper is also used for the same reason to do other applications such as machine load / unload, or handling fragile parts. Reduce fixture costs and complexity Reduce operational costs Reduce reaction time and costs for engineering changes Reduce scrap due to human handling Increase production consistency Adapt your welding unit for mixed-model production
- So my message here is that: there are solutions for automating high mix applications with robots but we must change our mindset with respect to tooling. We must use flexible tooling combined with sensing. And the ones that do the effort and move forward to new approaches will be rewarded by reaping the benefits of automation while others will be left in the status quo.
- If you’d like to evaluate if the approach discussed would work in your plant. I invite you to contact us. Thank you for watching!