Arc welding with manual jig change

Cell description

The cell consists of two KUKA KR16 L6 robots for arc welding. Components for bumpers in the auto industry are produced. The robots work at a rotary table that holds a jig on each side into which the parts to be welded are clamped. The robots weld the parts on one side while the cell operator removes the finished parts on the second jig and inserts new ones.

Task definition

The customer handles lot sizes of a few hundred pieces in the cell. This means the cell setup needs to be changed two to three times a week. As the new jig can only be inserted imprecisely when setup is changed, all the welding programs need re-teaching. Consequently the setup change process can take up to eight hours, in other words a whole shift in which production is halted.

Implementation

When the jig has been inserted with a forklift, the base is measured with the LaserLAB. With the measurement, the points in the program now match exactly and re-teaching is totally unnecessary.

RotoLAB is used additionally for automatic checking and correction of the tool coordinates.

Customer benefit

The customer has reduced his setup times from eight hours to about 30 minutes.