GBP 1 million robotics spend increases efficiency

Two robotic machine cell management systems at a specialist automotive parts supplier helps it to meet customers' 'costs down' requirements as well as overcoming operator skills shortages.

The recent installation of two robotic machine cell management systems at specialist automotive parts supplier, Carringworth Limited, is part of a GBP 1 million investment in manufacturing automation made over the past 2 years.

The equipment has contributed to Carringworth's continued development in the fiercely competitive automotive sector by increasing operational efficiency.

Founded just 25 years ago with four enthusiastic employees and a few machine tools, Carringworth now has a workforce of approximately 300 people employed on three sites - the main site being located at Smalldole near Brighton and two satellite plants in Baglan, South Wales, and Chalon-sur-Saone in France.

Producing close tolerance machined components typically found in power steering pumps, diesel injectors and fuel pumps, Carringworth is a leading supplier to manufacturers of automotive equipment.

The two latest automated cells bring the 'robot population' at Carringworth to a total of eight.

All eight systems use a FANUC M-16i robot mounted on a seventh linear axis for handling components through various machine operations.

"The latest systems installed closely follow the 'keep it simple' principle of the existing cells where the objective is to achieve 95% efficiency." explains Bob Hare, Carringworth's Operations Director.

"We operate on a single part processing principle with raw material or forgings entering the cell and a finished component being produced from it - ready for shipping.

With no batching, no queuing and no stock we also ship on a daily basis." Looking at the new cells the benefit of this principle is apparent.

No WIP (work in progress) is visible - only small quantities of un-machined and finished machined components are present outside the uncluttered and almost clinically clean cell.

Within the cell the FANUC robot works continually at an unhurried pace, dictated by the machining operation times, transferring the component between 4 machines which carry out turning and gun drilling operations in a 79 second cycle.

Working outside the guarded cell is an operator who loads components into two machines for the final operations and carries out inspection procedures making adjustments to the machines as required.

"What makes this system 'simple' is that it was purposefully engineered to be so," continues, Hare.

"We avoided in-process probing and automatic offset adjustment because of the time it adds to the process and its avoidable complexity.

Avoidable because on the basis that we had an operator who needed to carry out programmed inspection anyway, we would be in a position to input offset requirements to a controller manually.

"This requirement to adjust offsets from outside the cell, for all machines, from one controller, quickly and simply, became the key to our sourcing the most suitable systems builder for the project." The FANUC robot control system has overall control of the cell and interfaces with all the machine controllers.

In the operator area a single touch screen panel enables full control of the cell.

Along with system monitoring the panel also displays offset information and allows in process operator intervention.

"Apart from demonstrating a strong understanding of our requirements, FANUC also had extensive knowledge and experience of working with FANUC CNC controllers - common to most machines in our facility.

The control requirement demanded more than an 'every day' solution and FANUC's team worked closely with us to ensure system functionality fully met our expectations," continued Hare.

Production outputs are based on the systems running at 24/7 which necessitates high levels of reliability and minimal planned downtime.

To the casual observer clean downs and tool changes can easily be missed as colour coded teams - black shirts for support and cleaning, yellow shirts tooling and support etc - descend on the cell and perform their tasks in 'true calm' F1 fashion.

"Reliability of our previous six systems has been 100% and this naturally had a great impact on our decision to use FANUC.

The implications of poor reliability and less than 100% acceptable quality output of product would have a major impact on our business with our major customers operating '0' parts per million reject levels before imposing a 5 week containment period.

"Robotic automation is our assurance of control of the process and ultimately of its quality, and helps us to meet our customers 'costs down' requirements.

Other tangible benefits, are the manpower saving per cell over three shifts and the system's contribution to overcoming the increasingly short supply of skilled operators," concluded Hare.

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