FORMING AND FABRICATING AUTOMATION
3.3: End-of-Line Part Handling Press-Line Automation: The Future of Stamping Manufacturing T railblazing through the last frontier of pressroom automation with end- of-line auto racking, part stacking, bin picking, auto threading and hyper- sensoring to expedite productivity, improve quality, enhance safety and go where no stamping operation has gone before.
Paul Stirret, VP sales and marketing, Linear Automation, a Nidec Press & Automation company, says that the trend in press-line automation is to advance into areas of the pressroom that have not been automated in the past, and that end-of-line and bin picking are the last frontier for pressroom automation. “We’ve discovered that most companies are investigating au- to-racking and auto-part-stacking,” he says. “With the new vision systems in the field today, we can pick parts and properly place them into racks. A robot can go into a random bin of parts, lo- cate a part, pick it and place it into a secondary downstream process or another tote.” Kevin VanDenBrouck, COO, HMS Products, an Aida-America company, agrees that end-of-line is where it’s at. “We see chal- lenges at the end of the line where customers need to automate the process to eliminate issues with poor-quality parts getting through and ending up at their customers’ plants,” he says. “We see the need to automate the part-out process—racking parts and placing parts in bins, eliminating the need for multiple em- ployees at the end of line.” John Walas, manager, product and solutions group, Komatsu, points to how automation, specifically cobots, allow stampers to perform some processes in a stamping press that cannot be done with human operators. Case in point: perforating a solid tubular part while holding it in proper position as work is performed.
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