Look before you leap: Adding automation takes preparation

they’re a little bit reluctant to know, to find out, that they’re behind the curve, but it’s reality. A lot of the companies [that] didn’t do it five, six, 10 years ago are definitely behind the curve, and they need to hire young engineering talent into their companies and spend the dollars to recruit that talent to ... work with system integrators to implement successful automated systems.”

But they should take on the project in small chunks, experts say. 

Tim Lavigne is the business unit manager for Absolute Robot Inc. (ARI), which can work with customers to integrate projects involving its own automation, along with six-axis Fanuc robots, Haitian injection molding machines (IMMs) and other equipment. 

“We identify what we feel would be quick wins, very approachable applications, and we say, ‘Let’s start here.’ And the nice thing is if you’re looking at stuff like a big program, or they want to remove parts and inspect and do some de-gating or laser etching, stuff like that, it seems like there’s a whole long path this part is going to take, we like to break it into segments, and we say, ‘Let’s start with just the removal.’ ” 

Axis of communications 

By coordinating information among the makers of IMMs, robots, automation, end-of-arm tooling (EOAT) and molds, integrators can make the most efficient use of processors’ resources, while guiding them to the best solutions, experts say. 

That’s one reason why IMM makers that supply robots report an increase in orders for complete work cells.  

“You eliminate finger-pointing,” said Marko Koorneef, president of Boy Machines. 

“It really depends on what the customer wants. … We always look at, what kind of application? What is the customer looking for? And then try to figure out what would be the most cost-effective and adequate robot or automation.” 

Sized for success 

As Milacron’s product manager for auxiliary equipment, Ron Gulbransen has experience in planning for all kinds of big projects — from the installation of water lines at new plants to the layout of materials-handling systems. He’s seen customers pair new presses with standard robots, with little consideration for anything other than the machine’s clamping force. He’s also helped design molding projects involving inserts, complex core pulls, tight tolerances, crowded spaces, multiple turns and dozens of cavities. 

Parts are becoming more complicated; so is the equipment for handling them. 

But those intricacies can be overlooked when IMM customers initially consider robots for their presses. 

“A lot of customers just feel like you can just take any robot and put it on any molding machine,” he said. “Any molding machine has multiple-size robots you can put on it, but everybody seems to think if you tell them what size press [it is], it’s just going to automatically populate as far as what type of robot it’s going to need.” 

However, clamp size alone doesn’t provide enough information. 

Gulbransen pointed to a Costa Rican molder’s 48-cavity tool set up on a 330-ton Roboshot IMM. The medical parts it produces aren’t easy to remove. 

“We had to add cylinders to the end-of-arm tool, just to be able to get the parts to actually extract off the core of the customer's mold. Unfortunately, that kind of detail is not oftentimes shared from the customer,” he said.  

Because of that, Milacron’s five-axis robots for comparably sized presses would not suffice. 

“That end-of-arm tool itself required me to increase the robot size from what I would have quoted as maybe a 5X-15, or a 5X-25, which would fit a 330 perfectly; instead, I had to bump up to a robot that I would typically put on a 700-ton press.” 

Automation in action 

“If there’s any one major thing that needs to be taken into consideration on any robotic system from the front end,” Gulbransen said, “it’s understanding the application, mold and getting that mold-opening dimension and seeing what we have to work with. Because so many times I get requests where, ‘I need a robot for this size press’ and very little information relating to the actual mold itself, the actual parts we’re taking out.” 

From ceiling to floor, there is a lot to consider. 

For Gulbransen, it starts in the space above the molding machine. How much room is there? When the robot is stretching out, does it interfere with the tie bars or overhead-crane rails? 

Add to that concerns about guarding and conveyor configurations, as well as the riser height of the robot, and conversations about space get pretty deep. 

Among the physics phenomena Gulbransen keeps an eye on is something called a singularity — “where the robot gets all the axes moved to a certain location, and it just … locks the robot up.” 

One Milacron customer overcame this problem by turning the robot upside down, so it could generate enough leverage to pull parts from the mold and set them on a conveyor. 

An application involving car windshields also involved careful consideration of space. As part of the assembly process, a robot applies 14 clips to each sheet of windshield glass and presents the glass to an ultraviolet-light heater, where it is warmed up; then, the robot loads the glass into the press, so it can be overmolded with plastic.  

To accommodate all those steps in a tight space around a 1,100-ton IMM, Milacron designed three-sided EOAT.  

“You actually had to come in, [the] robot already had the next-shot window in its hand; then, it had the 14 inserts on the other side. It had to come around and actually be able to grip that finished part and move that with a third side, that end-of-arm tool, which makes it much more complex, because the amount of space you have in between the mold halves, when the mold is open, really dictates what orientation you can move that robot,” Gulbransen said.  

In other cases, non-robot automation is the highlight of the cell. Even a particularly specialized part feeder can represent a big investment.  

Gulbransen described one such application: “We’re taking the robot with a bowl feeder, the customer can load the inserts outside of the cage; inserts go into a bowl feeder where they’re oriented correctly, so that the robot can pick them up in the same orientation every time. And then, the robot comes over and picks ... all four inserts, comes into the mold, loads the inserts on the one side of the mold half and then pulls the parts from the other mold half, comes out, sets the parts on a conveyor, in which they’re indexed in stacks or an array of four.” 

Bringing it all together 

With careful choreography, robots and other automation can perform in perfect harmony without a single misstep. 

Devlin said almost four-fifths of his customers have at least three robots beside the presses that DevLinks has helped them set up. Integrating four robots on one cell is a trend — but even that’s not close to a record for the company, which like AMT, ARI and Milacron, works with Fanuc models. 

“In 2017, we did a robotic system assembly line for blow molded bottles. It was an injection molded lid attached to a blow molded bottle, and we had to do 120 bottles per minute, assemble them at 120 bottles a minute and place them in a box or package them in the box,” he said. “We had 32 robots on that assembly line.” 

Arburg shared its own successes in a marketing piece about its work with NP Germany, an injection molder located in Brilon, Germany. 

NP Germany’s project head, Benedickt Niglis, dedicated several years of his engineering career to planning an automated cell in which nine robotic systems work together to produce impellers for car coolant pumps.  

Six-axis Kuka robots and a MultiLift V 30 from Arburg arrayed around an Arburg Allrounder 1500 T press remove, position and load parts for overmolding; transfer them to a camera inspection system; prepare them for welding; and pack them when finished. 

Niglis praised “Arburg’s cooperative approach, the standardized operation of its systems, including all peripheral equipment, plus the company’s swift support, short communication channels and solution-oriented work.” 

When things fall apart 

Not everything is so seamless. 

“We get a lot of owners that went to a robot show and some sales guy said, ‘Hey, for $60,000, you can have a robot,’ but they don’t really understand what it really takes to do it, or we have customers that have been researching or actually have failed automation efforts … where they spend a million dollars, and it doesn’t produce the level of production that they want it to or the task that they wanted, and they’re disgruntled with automation,” Ingles said.  

With six-axis robots becoming more popular, and automation in demand for more downstream applications, robot experts called out two misconceptions — that bigger is better, and that everything must happen at once. 

Companies should be realistic about what they can handle. 

“Articulated robots, they are a huge trend, of course, and you can be more flexible, especially considering up- and downstream processes … but if a standardized process is sufficient for you, then we recommend a linear robot, because you have a simpler setup,” said Deborah Lidauer, product manager for automation for Engel, which considers linear robots its most popular robots. “A linear robot is always simpler to program than an articulated robot, to be honest. You can imagine the kinematics of an articulated robot being quite complex, as well.” 

Engineering for success  

A fresh set of eyes can help even sophisticated manufacturers work through issues. Robot experts say that is what is needed on many automation projects, as manufacturers, including plastics processors, look for easy wins with automation. 

Ingles described with awe the work of a pharmaceutical company that is using electrons to sterilize syringes. As a consultant for AMT, he has entered the facility with a Geiger counter — when it beeps, he flees.  

“There’s 15 people picking up boxes by hand, it’s sitting on my conveyor, so we’re talking about splitting the atom, and then I get a bunch of [people] out here moving boxes. So, even in the most high-tech thing I’ve ever seen in my entire career since 1985, I still have people picking up boxes and they have a sore back, so they don’t show up to work.” 

For a company like AMT that has coordinated a lot of projects — from helping Google set the world record for the longest flight of a helium balloon to trimming cycle times for the production of McDonald’s toys — the fix for the pharmaceutical company is a familiar one.   

“We’re going to take all those people that lift boxes, and we’re going to teach them how to program robots, because so few people show up, it costs $100,000 a month to power up the electron-beam splitter, so, there’s $1.2 million a year, just to power it up. And it only runs it 53 percent of the time because people just don’t show up to load boxes. So, they’re going to spend $5 million on robots, and it’s going to pay for itself in six months, because we’re going to be able to triple their production,” Ingles said. 

For processors, what is possible comes down to the conversations between suppliers, as well as a probing evaluation of budget, staff and goals.  

“What it ends up boiling down to is the level of customer involvement and customer interest in their own capabilities. … Their level of involvement is really what drives the long-term success of any automation project,” Gulbransen said.  

“... If they’re really into it, and they’re interested in what we’re doing and they’re giving a lot of feedback and asking a lot of questions and really taking a lot of interest in each one of the specifications relating to the robot, it’s going to be a whole lot better.”

Karen Hanna, senior staff reporter

Contact: 

Absolute Robot Inc., Worcester, Mass., 508-792-4305, www.absoluterobot.com

Applied Manufacturing Technologies, Orion Township, Mich., 248-409-2000, www.appliedmfg.com 

Arburg Inc., Rocky Hill, Conn., 860-667-6500, www.arburg.com

Boy Machines Inc., Exton, Pa., 610-363-9121, www.boymachines.com

DevLinks Ltd., Arlington Heights, Ill., 847-749-0429, www.devlinksltd.com 

Engel Machinery Inc., York, Pa., 717-764-6818, www.engelglobal.com

Milacron Plastics Machinery America, Batavia, Ohio, 513-536-2000, www.milacron.com 

Omron Automation Americas, Hoffman Estates, Ill., 800-556-6766, https://automation.omron.com