The automotive industry has always been the main field of robot application. With the increasing demand for automation, the application of industrial robots has been further expanded. In addition to traditional welding applications, robots have also been widely used in fields such as machine tool loading and unloading, material handling and stacking, polishing, spraying, and assembly. Metal forming machine tools are an important component of machine tools. Forming processing is usually associated with high labor intensity, noise pollution, metal dust, and sometimes in environments with high temperature, high humidity, and even pollution. The work is simple and dry, making it difficult for enterprises to recruit people. The integration of industrial robots and forming machine tools can not only solve the problem of enterprise employment, but also improve processing efficiency and safety, improve processing accuracy, and have great development space.
Integrated application of CNC bending machine
There are two main ways to integrate robot bending applications. One is centered around the bending machine, where the robot is equipped with a vacuum suction cup and a bending unit is formed by magnetic separation of the feeding frame, positioning table, unloading table, and flipping frame. The second is a flexible sheet metal processing line formed by robots, laser equipment, CNC turntable punches, industrial robot walking shafts, sheet metal transmission lines, positioning tables, and vacuum suction cup grippers.
Integrated Application of Press Stamping:
There are two main ways to integrate robots and press stamping applications. One is single robot stamping loading and unloading: the sheet metal is moved from the destacking table to the positioning table by the robot, and then transferred to the press mold for stamping. After stamping is completed, the material is picked up and placed into the stacking table by the robot, achieving automatic loading and unloading of the single press robot. The second is robot stamping connection: establish stamping connection between multiple press machines through multiple robots. According to the requirements of the workpiece forming process, it is necessary to cooperate with multiple press machines for processing. The entire production line consists of a destacking robot, a feeding robot, a transfer and transportation robot between the press machines, and a tail line robot. Compared with linear coordinate robots, industrial robots are more flexible and have no equal requirements for molds, making it easier to integrate
Integrated application of hot die forging:
The hot forging production line usually consists of two forging presses, one for stamping and the other for edge cutting. The integrated application of hot forging robots usually consists of two robots. One is responsible for transferring high-temperature materials processed by the intermediate frequency furnace to the stamping forming die forging press, and the other is responsible for taking materials from the stamping forming die forging press and transferring them to the other die forging press for edge cutting. To prevent high-temperature stamping workpieces from sticking to the mold, it is necessary to lubricate the mold with graphite after each stamping, which can be completed by robots or by specialized institutions. Due to the harsh environment caused by high temperature, high humidity, and graphite lubrication during forging, special attention should be paid to the protective work of the robot and its ability to resist thermal radiation.
Welding Applications
Welding is the final process of sheet metal processing in forming machine tools. There are two types of robot welding: resistance welding and arc welding, and the application of welding robots accounts for over 40% of the entire robot application. Arc welding applications are centered around robots, equipped with welding machines, wire feeders, welding guns, fixtures, and other components to form a welding workstation.
Robots are a typical representative of advanced manufacturing technology and automation equipment, and intelligent industrial equipment has become the foundation for the upgrading and transformation of the global manufacturing industry. The integrated application of industrial robots and CNC machine tools has enabled intelligent manufacturing, digital workshops, and intelligent factories to move from concept to reality.