I visited the Micron products and heard that they installed a robot that was actually two integrated robots to automate the process of picking up and putting small plastic fasteners into the shipping box.
What I\'m interested in is to learn more about the robotic gripper system used to pick apps and see the technology in action.
Micron products produce billions of parts each year.
Manufacturer of this contract-
Headquartered in Philadelphia, Massachusetts, USA. S. -
Focus on
plastic injection molding for medical devices, aerospace, defense and life sciences markets.
In this industry, you win the business by providing customers with a low unit price.
\"This requires automation and creativity,\" says Salvatore Emma . \". Mr.
Emma is president and CEO of Micron products.
For a company that produces billions of parts, their factory is very small, about 120,000 square feet.
The company employs more than 100 employees in three shifts.
Before the robot is implemented, the injection molding machine pushes the parts to the conveyor line at high speed, and six workers will collect a whole line of goods and place them in boxes for shipment.
Parts produced are one of the components used to make car seats.
Fasteners enter the inside of the seat, helping to keep the inner wiring of the seat together.
\"This is the worst job in the factory,\" said Drew Sandin, vice president of business development . \".
The workers will try to leave their jobs in this cell.
\"They have to work at great speed.
\"It\'s hard to keep up even if you stop and itch your nose.
But the project is driven by the economy.
\"We quoted a certain price for each item. \" Mr. Emma explained.
\"We underestimated the cost.
We need automation.
\"Two years ago, in 2016, Meiguang asked senior automation companies and several other automation companies to come in and see if they had a solution.
Advanced automation company from Portsmouth New Hampshire is responsible for the implementation of ABB robot series.
Micron chose to use advanced automation because they have a solution with a good return on investment and they are able to automate production units faster than their competitors.
Advanced Automation quotes eight weeks to get the robot, implement it, and debug the system in one week.
This is a very, very fast turnaround time for the industry.
They fulfilled their commitment to lead time.
Continue to use existing manual processes before implementation.
During installation, the production unit only needs to be closed for a few days.
The advanced automation company decided to use a robot in ABB\'s FlexPicker series, called spider robots.
The robot was almost fully assembled from a factory in Michigan.
They enhanced the robot with the robot gripper system of the soft robot, which is located at the end of flexparms.
They need a soft robot solution because the plastic pieces taken out of the mold at temperatures of 90 to 100 degrees are still a little soft and will be crushed by traditional spider robots.
They also need a solution that can pick up and place objects at high speed.
Although spider robots are becoming a commodity, the system of grasping robots is not.
Meiguang looks at the suction power of the picking, but needs to put the parts into the shipping box with high precision --
Don\'t fall on the floor too early or too late.
This cannot be done with the suction solution.
Soft Robot is a young company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. S.
The company received $25 million in risk financing, and one of its investors was ABB.
Unlike other robotic picking solutions that try to solve this problem with complex machine learning algorithms that work to determine the applied pressure and how to locate the picking mechanism precisely, more is based on material science.
The holder is like a soft glove, filled with air, gently wrapping the picked object.
This method greatly simplifies the required mathematics.
The control system includes the control software of the spider robot arm, the control software of the gripper system, the visual system integrated into two solutions, a sensor, used to measure the speed of the conveyor and the precise position of the parts on the conveyor.
The return on investment is amazing.
Six people can do other things.
Their annual salary is about a quarter of a million dollars.
While Labor is occasionally required on the packaging line, this is 10% of the past.
In addition, the cell can now run at a faster rate and it does not need to slow down to adapt to human labor.
I have to say that the speed at which the robot picks up and places the parts surprised me when I look at the operation (
Watch videos here).
At the same time, robot batteries cost $140,000.
For Micron, this is a conservative 8-month return period for investment.
Financial calculations do not include soft benefits such as employee satisfaction and the ability to redeploy qualified employees (
Who is more and more difficult to recruit)
There are almost no packaging defects (
Much better accuracy than Six Sigma).
Chad Zrate, a product line director and engineering manager at Micron, said, \"The initial results were good and continued to improve.
It is much better than before.
\"Micron micron is a lean manufacturer committed to continuous improvement.
Micron\'s manufacturing engineer, Taylor Braun, explained that the latest projects aimed at improving the throughput of the unit include taking pictures of the slow motion of the running robot arm, this gives them an in-depth understanding of how to adjust the system.
I left the trip with some impressions.
First, it is possible for small contract manufacturers based in the United StatesS.
Be globally competitive, especially if they have built a strong
Work with knowledgeable automation partners.
Secondly, the investment return of this robot project is very good.
The return on automation projects for less than a year is very good!
There seems to be a lot of low hanging fruits in robot picking/packaging automation.
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