Industrial production has evolved from mechanical transmission to electrical transmission, and from single machines to production lines. This process involves not only changes in mechanical design and the integration of electrical systems with complex motion and robots, but also improvements in operational management such as lean manufacturing. Of course, the most crucial aspect is that each vertical industry has its own integration of industry-specific processes.
Today, the production of a mobile phone involves the integration of all complex engineering processes, including injection molding, sheet metal, electronics, packaging, robotics, logistics, simulation, software, information management, and artificial intelligence, and production lines are becoming increasingly complex.
It is precisely because manufacturing lines have become more complex and customer needs have become more personalized that continuous technological innovation is needed to solve these complex problems.
For the manufacturing industry, the three issues of "quality", "cost" and "delivery" have never changed. Therefore, no matter how complex our production and manufacturing are, we must solve these issues. Of course, in the intelligent era, the changes in products make "flexibility" or production flexibility an extremely urgent need.
Where does the challenge of manufacturing innovation lie? Let's step into the production scenario. The production of each mobile phone requires hundreds of processes. In each process, the physical object being processed needs to be positioned, and the torque output, speed, acceleration, and elastic deformation of the machinery are all required. The subdivided processes in each process all affect the entire production process. The key to the continuous development of innovation in the manufacturing process is to find the optimal parameters, processes, and materials under these constraints.
Every small improvement makes production more cost-effective and makes companies more competitive.
In flexible manufacturing production line design, the conveyor system is a crucial component because "collaboration" must be achieved through physical production line connections, including not only physical mechanical connections but also data communication connections. However, traditional production conveyors suffer from the following problems:
(1) Mechanical wear: The use of mechanical chains will cause wear to require frequent maintenance and will affect the transmission accuracy; moreover, it will also bring a large amount of noise. Due to the complexity of the machinery, maintenance will also become complicated, and more maintenance waiting time will be consumed, resulting in a decrease in the OEE of the production line.
(2) The positions between workstations cannot be flexibly changed: readjusting the mechanical system requires a lot of time for calibration;
(3) Lack of data communication & high difficulty in equipment coordination: It is impossible to interact with the control system and production system; and it is difficult to integrate into the modeling and simulation of digital design, as well as to achieve high-precision collaboration with process equipment and robots.
(4) Long product changeover cycle: Each adjustment to the production line requires disassembly and reassembly, which takes a lot of time;
(5) Complex production process: The conveying, feeding, processing and unloading processes are complex, especially for production with many processing steps, the proportion of non-effective processing time is large. This will result in a long production cycle.
The principle of the flexible electric drive conveyor system is shown in the figure:
On a straight track (composed of coils), the moving slider can move in the X-axis direction, and this track can be straight, curved or in various other forms, which can form different production line configurations.
Because the coil behind the track generates magnetic force, it creates a horizontal repulsive force with the permanent magnet of the slider, propelling the slider to move—this is consistent with the principle of a servo motor, except that this is a servo motor with a cutting mechanism. Moreover, unlike ordinary linear motors, it has a large number of sliders. The SuperTrak track provided by B&R can reach a maximum length of 50 meters, and the slider spacing can be distributed at around 200mm. The latest ACOPOStrak has been planned for a single project that can reach a length of 320 meters, with 500 sliders and a minimum slider spacing of 50mm.
Because the "track changing process" is achieved electromagnetically, it does not cause the wear and tear that occurs in traditional machinery. Furthermore, the electromagnetic system can also provide feedback on data such as the position of the production line, which are the reasons why it was developed.
In Figure 3 of ACOPOStrak, the small track can actually form a "maintenance station" like in F1. When defective products are rejected, they can go to this place, and this "maintenance station" can also be used as a place to change tooling fixtures and perform maintenance. That is, maintenance and fixture replacement do not affect the current production.
The flexible electric drive conveyor systems SuperTrak and ACOPOStrak are designed to solve the problems of traditional production lines in the manufacturing process. They have a wide range of features that make them truly "revolutionary" in production line design.
ACOPOStrak is a typical mechatronics design that enables interaction between digital design and physical objects based on "Digital Twin." It verifies the production line through modeling and simulation, and can be directly downloaded to the controller of the physical object for operation. The operation of the physical object can be digitally presented in real time in a virtual environment and can be adjusted, realizing real-time interaction between digital and physical objects.
The benefits of digital twins are:
(1) Production line planning and verification can be done in advance: its feasibility can be verified before the project enters the installation stage;
(2) Virtual debugging: Debugging the control logic and synchronization relationship in a virtual environment;
(3) Verification during process changes: When the production line is adjusted, the process can be verified online.
Humans possess flexibility that machines often lack. However, machines excel at tasks requiring precision, high frequency, and high-speed response. Human-machine collaboration is a trend in manufacturing line innovation, but safety technology plays a crucial role in this process.
In robotic systems, the collaborative robot safety standards IEC1566 and ISO-10218 are both safety standards for robot-human collaboration, and B&R's ACOPOStrak drive system, X20 controller, and ABB's robots all have the capability to meet functional safety requirements.
For example, SLS@TCP can provide a safe speed limit for the robot's TCP. When someone enters the work area, the system reduces the speed to avoid harm to the human body without disrupting the continuity of production. Of course, many other safety functions, including SMS and SDI, can be used to protect personal safety while maintaining a high level of OEE for the production line.
SuperTrak and ACOPOStrak enable any combination of production lines, achieving maximum production line flexibility. This flexibility stems from two aspects: the flexibility in production line planning itself, and, most importantly, the flexibility in product customization.
In which scenarios is trak needed?
Here are two simple examples:
(1) Food and beverage packaging line
If you have six different colored beverages from different production lines, you can combine them into one production line package to create a personalized case of beverages.
If you have a very high-speed filling machine, but the secondary packaging is the bottleneck, you can design the product from one filling line to be distributed to six different secondary packaging lines.
(2) Electronic product assembly
Parts from different production lines converge into one production line and are produced sequentially on the main track, which can then be achieved by multiple tracks converging and producing the parts.
B&R's SuperTrak/ACOPOStrak represents a new generation of intelligent production line design moving towards full digitalization and true flexible collaboration, with mechanical, electrical, software, and process components tightly integrated to achieve maximum production flexibility.
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