'Right First Time' Robot Set Up With RCS L-90
‘Factory in a Box’ is an idea developed by the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC). The concept emerged to fulfil a need for industrial robotics in remote or hazardous locations without human involvement.
In this case study, understand how The RCS L-90 portable in-field toolkit gave MTC the confidence to move containers without the need for manual robot reteaching.
Transcript
00:00:14 At the MTC, we look at how we can help different manufacturing businesses, particularly within the UK. Part government funded and it's part of a wider high value manufacturing catapult that is helping kickstart industry to become more productive, more profitable. The factory in a box is a concept that's been developed by the MTC and it really is looking at agile manufacturing. So,
00:00:37 we're targeting things that typically would be quite remote or difficult areas to get to. We have it all in a box ready to go, set up to run such that things can be produced at faster, cheaper, and safer. We're working really with a project called charge. It's really hazardous operations that can be done in a confined space. This one is focused around the the safe handling of
00:00:57 electrified batteries and electric vehicle components. So, we are looking at how we can automate the process of dismantling them for reuse and recycling. Uh and we have real pedigree in the UK of adopting technology and and using that technology for the greater good of manufacturing and robotics, automation, digitalization
00:01:19 are all key to those elements. Renishaw have a magnitude of of knowledge they can bring to automation. They've been leading the world of inspection for a very long time. You know, you can't find any tactile inspection system without a Renishaw probe on the end. So, you have a lot of knowledge on fundamentally how to do things right and how to do things accurately and applying those to robotic
00:01:37 applications where the robots are repeatable, but they're not very accurate.
>> calibrating it from day one, setting it up against a set of requirements because then you've started your manufacturing process with a set of data that you can learn from and in 6 months time, you can go and recalibrate your robot again to make sure that there's no inherent
00:01:55 problems that are going to affect you a later date. The RCS L-90 ballbar is a portable toolkit to advance industrial automation used by robot integrators and service providers in the field. It's a linear ballbar with 90 mm range to accurately measure the distance between the robot's end effector and the working environment.
00:02:17 The L-90 allows us to quickly check where the TCP or if there's any misalignment with the robot TCP. An updated TCP is vital to understand where the tool tip center is relative to the robot's coordinate system. This is especially important if the robot has been relocated or the tool has been changed. And the value here is time.
00:02:37 It's time and reliability of the data that's going to come out of this situation. Is that we will get full sighting of how the problem manifest itself, but we'll also get time reduction where on startup we can make sure that we've eliminated any risk on that robot to ensure that when we do start, we can go into production without having to chase tolerance problems
00:02:58 around the system. So since implementing this technology, we're seeing a right first time setup. We're pressing go on the robots and they're where they should be and the program's running automatically. We are saving time. We're not doing complex convoluted calibration procedures anymore. I'm not there with an external measurement system tracking the robot to ensure it's in the right
00:03:15 place. It it's just streamlined that and it so therefore productivity and throughput just goes straight up by implementing them. And as I said, hopefully this will be the new normal for us. We will integrate this with all our robotic cells where there is the chance for things to drift over time and ensures that consistent approach going forward. When you're talking quality and
00:03:33 excellence, I like to think Renishaw and it made sense in this instance moving into the automation space as that they are that to bring them in on this project.
>> Renishaw as a trusted partner in the industry. So to utilize them in this sort of application was a real bonus for us to be able to get a leap ahead in the technology as it's come out
00:03:51 uh improve the way that we calibrate robots.