28 June 2024 Production Engineering Solutions pesmedia.com HONING & DEEP HOLE DRILLING shaft diameters to be handled. The robot cell entered service in March 2023. To provide component storage, it has a standard, 176-position grid plate able to hold shafts that are 20mm to 35mm in diameter and 75mm to 250mm long. In addition, an 88-position grid plate for shafts from 35mm to 50mm in diameter and up to 550mm long has been supplied. Four shafts are transferred one by one from the grid plates to two buffer storage locations positioned immediately in front of the working area. To minimise machine idle time, the process is completed while the deep hole drilling machine is producing the previous four components. The purpose of the additional transfers is to reduce the distance parts subsequently have to travel when the TBT machine has stopped and loading and unloading is in progress. When the drilling cycle finishes and the doors have opened, the robot uses its gripper to pick up the first new shaft, extract a finished component from the machining area, load the new workpiece to be drilled, and deposit the machined component into one of the same two buffer storage locations. While swapping a new shaft for a deep hole drilled component, the system checks the position of the part in the machine and, if necessary, measures the length of the shaft again via an integrated sensor to prevent a possible collision. The unloading/loading procedure is repeated three more times in a continuous cycle, after which the buffer stations contain four finishmachined parts and four fresh shafts that are in the machine for drilling. The drilled components are transferred by the robot, again in parallel with machining of the next batch of shafts, to the rear of the robot cell from where they are removed by hand. Replenishment of the grid plates with raw material at the front of the cell is similarly carried out manually. “Both we and Halter were well aware that we were entering new territory with this solution, so we started making optimisations as soon as production started and this is ongoing,” Mr Hartmann concludes. “The average cycle for loading the machine is currently about 3.5 minutes, but we are working to further reduce the time taken. With the robot feeding the deep hole drilling machine, the cell now produces components automatically over a single eight-hour shift and often runs an unattended shift as well, raising productivity further.” Q 1st Machine Tool Accessories www.1mta.com Florian Hartmann, series production team leader at Ott-Jakob Spanntechnik The working area of the TBT machine, showing four parts being loaded sequentially for deep hole drilling Scan here for more 1st MTA articles
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