News briefs for the week check out the brand new pattern in manufacturing referred to as microfactories—the place robots rule, a first-ever, ready-to-use 3D printing cupboard, T-skin security sheathing for cobots and industrial robots, and a do-it-yourself 3D printed cobot for desktop manufacturing.
Microfactories: Where robots rule!
Are microfactories the way forward for manufacturing? There’s a manufacturing unit automation pattern that’s simply starting to take maintain that deviates radically from the usual meeting line, particularly these in auto crops. Korea’s Hyundai has constructed such a completely completely different auto plant for its electrical automobile manufacturing (EV) in Singapore.
The Hyundai plant is made up of pods or cells the place 60% of the manufacturing of the Ioniq 5 EV is achieved by robots (see video); the remaining 40% is accomplished by human staff alone or in partnership with robots.
The net-net on the subject of workers is that it makes use of solely 100 staff to provide 30,000 automobiles a yr. In pod assemblies, robots rule!
Alpesh Patel, VP of Innovation at Hyundai, thinks {that a} microfactory’s cell manufacturing methodology may properly be normal in a couple of years. Overall price discount to fabricate is 50% lower than a standard or absolutely customized automated line. “This is because modules use 70% of the same components (frame, power, safety, conveyor system).” Plus, improvement and meeting time is usually 50% lower than a completely automated customized line.
“In the cells” writes Suvrat Kothari, “robots install components of a car, before moving to the next zone. The key differentiator is that the cells can be programmed with specific instructions, right from installing components for different variants of the same car, or to working on a completely different model. Traditional assembly lines would need significant retooling for similar adaptability.”
The cells are linked collectively by a standard conveyor and feeder system, able to offering excessive quantity, excessive combine manufacturing functionality.
Modular automation can scale up or down simply. “Depending on the complexity of the product or sub-assembly, manufacturers can easily expect to get 3-4k units’ per hour (UPH), or 1 million units a month.”
Ready-to-use 3D printing robotic
Market want: Ready-to-use, turn-key system offering an environment friendly, quick, and secure resolution for manufacturing steel 3D printed components, 
particularly with stainless-steel, nickel, and titanium. To meet the necessity, Spain’s Meltio and US-based One Off Robotics partnered for the manufacturing of a self-enclosed 3D printing cupboard.
Meltio is a producer and developer of wire-laser steel 3D printing applied sciences, and One Off Robotics is a builder of robotic arm fabrication methods for additive, subtractive, and hybrid manufacturing processes.
In combining their applied sciences, they declare a first-ever, turn-key resolution to supply industries with an environment friendly additive manufacturing work cell named the One Off Robotics Cell. According to Meltio Product Manager, Alejandro Nieto, “This new hardware system allows the customer to receive a ready-to-use cell for robotic metal 3D printing, removing the integration process and long assembly lead times.”
With a deposition price of as much as 1 kg an hour, this technique produces absolutely dense components which might be mechanically equal or superior to these created from conventional means.
The One Off Robotics Cell seamlessly integrates management of the system, permitting the person to simply modify settings for fast printing. Its 8-axis system simplifies printing of advanced geometries and is configured to work with the Meltio Space robotic slicer.
Safety pores and skin stops robots immediately
Keeping staff secure from cobots has at all times been a priority; extra so with cobots than normal industrial robots, that are often segregated from staff by fencing or partitions.
In 2016, FANUC launched contact-sensing cobot security padding which had been polyurethane foam pads utilized to the outside of cobot arms. Stopping time in 2016 was 9 milliseconds.
Nearly ten years on, Taiwan-based Touche Solutions (previously named Mechavision) has just lately developed a contact-sensing movie of security materials that’s additionally utilized to the outside of not solely cobot arms but additionally to these of commercial robotic arms. Called T-skin, it has a stopping time of 1 millisecond. Want to understand how lengthy a millisecond is? Check out the video beneath.
Touche Solutions’ founder and chairman, Camus Su, and basic supervisor, Liu Changhe, are graduates of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). Their collaboration in 2017 led to Touche Solutions, which emphasizes “tactile sensing technology to trigger emergency stops in robots, serving as a crucial safety measure beyond visual and light grids.”
The founders declare that T-Skin, was developed primarily based on the ISO normal unit of 10 newtons (1kgf) that triggers emergency stops in response to an exterior drive of 1 kilogram, inside 1 millisecond, and is unaffected by both electromagnetic waves or RF.
A main goal of Touche Solutions is “to outfit conventional industrial robots with collaborative [cobot] capabilities, which has garnered fast recognition from main Japanese robotics firms (FANUC, Kawasaki, and so forth.).
All of which means industrial robots can now, with the addition of T-skin, tackle jobs previously meant just for cobots working in and round individuals.
DIY 3D printed desktop cobot
Got a small-shop enterprise with a lot of desktop manufacturing wants? Need a strong academic cobot arm for studying initiatives? Want to market and promote cobots on-line to a world viewers? Introducing the award-winning PAROL6 (Source Robotics).
Roboticist Petar Crnjak is hoping to carry industrial-style robotic arms to a wider viewers with an open-source 3D-printable six-axis design dubbed the PAROL6 — providing help for a formidable 2.2lbs (1kg) payload.
Crnjak says his “PAROL6 is a high-performance, 3D-printed desktop robotic arm, with a design strategy much like ” of his creation. “The design strategy of PAROL6 was to be comparable “to industrial robots when it comes to mechanical design, management software program, and usefulness. Control software program, GUI [Graphical User Interface], and PAROL6’s STL recordsdata are open supply.” Aside from a pneumatic gripper, every axis is pushed by a stepper motor, with no less than a couple of of those axes being pushed via a steel planetary gearbox for further precision and torque.
Depending on ones’ stage of experience, PAROL 6, with entry to a 3D printer and on-line design specs (free), it may be a DIY mission; it additionally is available in equipment type; or bought able to go straight out of the field for $3.200 (3,000 euros).
“By pairing industrial mechanical design with state-of-the-art software and electronics, the PAROL6 robot can achieve smooth motions, high speeds, and high repeatability. PAROL6 is built with education, research, and small automation in mind!”
