Use compact industrial robots to make any shop more productive
In the ALNEA application, the robotic arm provides the steady hand while the end-effector soldering iron’s control system ensures both the temperature and timing of the soldering operation are within set parameters (Figure 6). With the first units of a production run, the human operator sets the soldering parameters and trains the robot arm on the movement sequence. Operators then help position the pc board and components for robotic soldering during the
rest of the production run. The company saw a 50% reduction in production time by using the robot for selective soldering. The task to be automated may not even need to be a complete operation to prove economically beneficial. For example, the BMW Group has integrated a robotic arm into its existing workflow for the production of reinforced side members in automobiles simply to relieve the human operator from a repetitive task requiring
precision that human operators found difficult to sustain throughout a work shift. The task was to position a number of metal reinforcement plates at points along the frame prior to inserting the frame into an automated welding station. However, the strain of repeatedly performing this otherwise simple task of positioning resulted in increased errors and reduced throughput as the day wore on.
Figure 6: Robotic arms can provide the steady hand and precision positioning needed for applications such as selective soldering in pc board production. (Image source: KUKA Robotics Corp.)
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