Metal parts palletising finds robotics solution

Arcelor asked its integrator Georg France to propose a robotised solution that would palletise the metal parts coming out of the press according to the very high quality standards.

Arcelor Mittal is said to be the number one steel producer with factories worldwide.

Its Senica factory in Slovakia produces rolling tinplate used in the automotive industry.

This plant employs 200 people and 70% of the production is exported.

At this plant, Arcelor is facing a significant challenge when palletizing the metal sheets after press: end customers receiving their sheet metal pallets demand to have perfectly aligned sheets to make the depalletizing process fast and easy.

Arcelor was using 3-axes linear robots.

The pickandplace operation was really fast, but the global cycle time (between an empty pallet and a complete pallet) was much higher because the placing of the metal sheets was bad.

This meant that an operator had to hammer the metal parts to get a nice pallet.

Arcelor also tried a solution where the metal parts were mechanically aligned on the pallet, but this was damaging the metal sheet, thus resulting in errors at the end customer's factory when welding the parts.

In order to solve this problem, Arcelor asked its integrator Georg France to propose a robotized solution that would palletize the metal parts coming out of the press according to the very high quality standards that the end customer was expecting.

Georg France soon thought that a robot equipped with vision could solve the problem of non straight pallets.

The managing director consulted FANUC Robotics as well as competitors, and soon decided to work with FANUC Robotics France because of the very high reliability of the robots as well as the innovative vision system.

Georg also wanted a trustful partner, which is why Arcelor was convinced to work with FANUC robots.

FANUC Robotics France did some tests and offered a solution running as follows: 1.

Two 4-axes M-410iB/160 take metal sheets out of a moving line.

(As the parts can vary, the robots are equipped with tool changer.) 2.

Each robot carries 2 or 4 cameras (depending on the part) which calculate the exact position of the gripped part.

3.

Thanks to the FANUC V-500iA/2DV vision system, the robot knows exactly how to place the metal part to get a perfect pallet.

The robot cycle time reaches 4seconds, corresponding to 30 hits/minute from the press.

The solution is really appreciated by the customer because of andnumber9675; the robot high speed and high wrist inertia andnumber9675; the strong programming power andnumber9675; the vision system At the end of the day, the pickandplace operation with vision for placing with robot results in a much faster cycle time!.

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