As a Machine Vision guy who is just putting his toe into the robot water and bought his first robot a few weeks ago I would bolt the robot onto a table built from aluminum strut profiles (eg. Bosch Rexroth) and with steering rollers under it. That's what I did. Then attach the table to some struts bolted to the floor or directly to the machine. This comes with several advantages: 1. You can build the table exactly to your specifications and fix the controller and the electrical cabinet on the table. This is much more rigid than your welding table and about the same price. 2. The robot always has a fixed position in relation to the CNC machine. With your current setup you can get your robot positions messed up if someone accidently bumps into your welding table. 3. You can easily move the robot to another CNC machine if necessity arises. If you want I can send you a picture of the table I built for my Kawasaki robot.
We use the same solenoids for our enclosure designs. They do get a little on the hot side after prolonged use, not enough to say ouch when touched but I would advise an air vent to prolong the life of the enclosure internals.
Our industry standard quick connects for electrical and pneumatics are Harting Han Modular connections. You can put pneumatics and electrical in the same connector and it snaps together. It's also poka yoked to make sure it connects the same way every time. I use it a lot in my industrial equipment designs. But I also see you guys struggling with the CRobot, and that's been our experience as well in the tier 1 automotive sector. Standard industrial robots are cheaper, faster, and more suited to the tasks (CRobots are about 4x the cost). We've used ABB robots and have been extremely satisfied, they are an "engineer's robot".
Yes, those connectors are great! They're a no-brainer if we continue to adapt the robot to other machines. We are very open to using different robots in the future and thank you for the suggestion on ABB. UR robots are easy to demonstrate and deploy but at their core they still run a script that doesn't even require the pendant. In reality, they are two systems - the motion control and the user interface. I'm very open to ditching the UI for better pricing and more capabilities.
@@PiersonWorkholding Most, if not all, industrial robots have separate motion controls and user interface pendants. I know the ABB can operate without a pendant. Going from UR to ABB UI isn't a down grade since they both run a PC control environment on their touch screen pendant. You'll lose some screen real estate, but it will more than make up for it in its capabilities. For example, on a lot of the systems I design we do not require a PLC because the controller is powerful enough to multi-task background applications. It's also a very robust scripting language with decades of continuous improvement.
@@capnthepeafarmer and dont forget Robotstudio i just love it and am trying to convince the higher ups to replace our ageing fanuc and kuka robots wit abb just for the ability to use robotstudio roboguide or the cluster fuck kuka called offline pragramming (we have kr c2 running, so no workvisual) cant compare to abb's software the only thing i am missing from it is a darkmode for the rapid editor but you also need to mention that with every industrial robot, compared to a cobot, you will need to fullfill a lot of safety critiria and that normaly ends in a fixed installation with fencing and all that
@@capnthepeafarmer Comparing UR and ABB is apples and oranges. CoBot vs standard industrial aside, they are geared towards different markets. Most UR applications are quick to deploy, tend to be on the simpler side, and are frequently maintained by people with limited to almost no programming experience. That comes with some trade-offs. It's not the most robust system and has frequent issues. ABB on the other hand is extremely robust and sophisticated. Especially when you compare Robot Studio to UR's Polyscope as UR has no offline package (not including the 'simulator').
Thats a fine setup for the robot, I like it. Interesting that the table is not fixed to the cnc machine or floor, just in case someone or something whould hit it and move it out of position. But easiest soulution is having it free standing like that, when that's good enough
You're probably right about anchoring the table, BUT we don't solve future problems before they're actual problems. In 6 years, the table has never been bumped.
Nice setup! You guys have come a long way. One way to reduce hot spots on shiny materials is to try some polarizing film. A small piece of over the light and/or the lens may help with that. I have a lot of experience with the wrist camera and it can be finicky at times. It's gotten better with software updates. Some would say use rubber or another material as the background but the material you're using is perfectly fine. It's low reflectance and easily replaceable as you mentioned. Vision is all about lighting.
Did you consider using a regrip station instead of a camera for accurate pickup position? An angled pickup station that locates on two edges of the extrusion can get very repeatable position. It requires your extrusion is reasonably consistent size however.
Regrip stations are fine if there is very little variation in raw part size. Saw cuts and extrusion widths have very loose tolerances which makes a camera ideal since it always finds the exact center of the part.
Air loss is always an upstream problem and fairly unlikely. However, if the vacuum gripper or vacuum chuck doesn't reach a minimum threshold, the robot or machine respectively will trigger an alarm. This is done with vacuum level monitors on both devices. Link to the explanation in an earlier video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7MrYSGXMap4.html
put the cart on wheels with proper anchor points to each machine and quick connects and you have a mobile "worker" depending on work orders and availability of machine and parts
@nerdkusi The different subprograms have their own origins much like G54, G55, etc in a CNC machine. That way you can fine tune exactly where things go. When we move the platform to a lathe, we can still use the cart location, the camera location and add another origin and create a unique subprogram with the spindle as the X-Y-Z zero.
For a Lean Evangelist, I am shocked that you have extra valves "just in case"! That sounds like something I would do... lol Using a stacking valve style like that, it would be simple to add more as needed, instead of putting extras in. I do have a couple of face-palm observations. Putting all the controls in a nice sealed box, and then drilling holes in it to allow dust and moisture in, to save occasionally opening the lid to adjust the door speed ? It makes access harder having little holes tucked down on the side, and makes it impossible to see the valve position when setting it, so all you have is "a tiny bit" rather than "from the 3 o'clock position to the 4 o'clock position" As an industrial mechanic, such designs always frustrated me lol On the vision table, while the expensive cloth works great, it totally goes against the Lean philosophy, because now you have to stock something extra, instead of combining function. You can get flat black rubber matting, or spray the table with rubberized paint, undercoating etc, or you already use plywood on the cart, so flat black paint on a piece of plywood, and repaint occasionally. I really doubt that the ultra black cloth will help much more than just flat black rubber or paint or astroturf or felt. It's great stuff for film, but I doubt that you need that perfect cinematic black just to avoid reflection off a glossy rubber mat. Your new guy seems to be good at finding the more complex ideas, almost like he's trying to be creative even if they aren't the best ideas. For instance, the mounting plate with standoffs. You could do the same thing by putting the plate underneath the tabletop, bolting it through the same way, or just welding it, and then cut a hole through the tabletop to feed the wires down. Now, maybe the mounting surface of the arm needs to be at that exact height, and so it has a purpose being raised up, but round spacers aren't the best way to do it, because it's not just supporting vertical load, that arm has quite a bit of moment on the base, constantly swinging around, and over time, probably not much time, those bolts are probably going to loosen from the side forces, and that plate will start dancing on the spacers, and you lose the repeatability and precision of the robot. If the plate can't be moved under the table, or even just bolted flat on the top with a hole for the cables, then the spacers need to be replaced with some blocks that have a lot of surface area to stop side to side movement and give stability, with the bolts just providing clamping force, and not having to resist side forces. If the arm base has to be at an exact height, it might be easier to just drop the plate to the surface, and then bolt or weld some extensions to the bottom of the feet to raise the entire table to the correct height, but I suspect that the height isn't critical anyway, and the spacers were just to avoid putting a hole in the tabletop.
We had no idea there were such brilliant mechanics out there like you that could watch a 15 minute video and instantly come up with such great feedback that was better than a year's worth of our continual improvements. Thank you!
@@PiersonWorkholding nice Troll, you give some of the best in the RU-vid comments a run for their money! I guess your year of learning beats my 25 years of seeing what happens with various techniques. My comments were constructive input on, with some possible suggested improvements on potential issues that I have seen play out before, as an operator, a designer, and a repair and often redesign person working with similar systems. You are pretty good at a lot of things, but this isn't your main area of expertise, and it is mine. Now, if you already tested and modeled and worked through all the issues I mentioned, then I may deserve to be dismissed, but it sounded more like you had your feelings hurt by being questioned, and that you feel like because you have been working on this side project for so long, that you have it dialed in. And I am impressed with a lot of what you do, and most of this setup and system, but there are a few things that don't seem like they will stand the test of time well, and may not be ideal, and so I extended the effort to offer my experience to improve the system, but you don't seem to be open to any other views, which I guess isn't surprising. Anyway, I won't be surprised if some of the things I mentioned get redesigned later, but I am sure that you will specifically do it differently than I suggested just because lol, and I also realize that things don't always fail in the same ways, so maybe it will be fine, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be considered at least. Thank you for sharing how you feel about your viewers who make the effort to share their experience, rather than just pad your ego with repetitive praise and simple questions. Have a great day!
